


You Are Shadow Stalker

by AwesomeJon



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Swap, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2020-09-30 13:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeJon/pseuds/AwesomeJon
Summary: Taylor and Sophia find themselves in a Freaky Friday scenario right before the Lung fight. Each armed with new self knowledge, they must make choices quickly — the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, and a lady without a hat has come a long way to see what happens next.





	1. Chapter 1

[ _ "The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty. If you wish to find that which becomes the dividing line between mankind and other biological classifications, it rests not in brain size, dominance, or even emotional capability, but lies in the unique capacity for human beings to reflect on their actions and show regret. It is most certainly the ability to empathize that gives them their position. All mammals understand love and affection, but only man shows the propensity to place himself into the shoes of another life-form. Losing this capability, among individuals of this species, reduces them below their much heralded position, and readies the climate for the likely fall of man, the fall from grace." _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck4vl_8KZMI)

  


You wake, your eyes opening with effort against what appears to be a shiner from hell and a…hangover? No, a concussion. Maybe. You've never had either and you are so, so tired. It's a school day and you don't even know how you got back home last night. But you are _Shadow Stalker_ and you are _not prey_ and you know you found a way. 

  


You hear whistling down the stairs, hear what sounds like a teakettle and a man singing. _Jesus, Terry must have gotten into the good shit. _Your throat feels dry. When you finally speak your voice is loud enough to be heard, but it squeaks in surprise. "Mom what is T — WHAT THE FUCK?" That’s not your voice. It’s familiar though, and not in a good way.

  


And the reply isn't any easier, as a white guy, thinning blond hair, glasses, pops his head into your bedroom. "Taylor! You had another bad dream? I know it's hard. I still miss her too." 

  


You are Shadow Stalker. You are not prey. You are also apparently _fucking Hebert _and it is not fucking Friday and you are so fucking confused.

  


*****

  


Your bed is not as comfortable as you would like it to be. It reminds you of the bed in the mental ward, in terms of comfort, although it's much better. It doesn't feel right though. As you toss and turn, your phone's text tone rings; it's unfamiliar, and you don't quite understand why. You have a text from Emma, which you ignore. The homescreen is sparse, utilitarian, with only these texts and another app, which you guess is the one the notification is from. It's one of those secure apps that doesn't display the message body in a thumbnail. You always wanted one of those, when you had someone to share secrets with and secrets worth sharing. You're not sure what the hell you did with your phone but whoever woke you up at 3 in the morning better be worth it. You open the message. 

  


_PRT Local Flash_

_Undersiders active Docks, major action in progress. Lung engaged. Fight is escalating, currently contained to three block radius of 49th Street and John Howland Avenue. Stand by. _

  


_PRT Direct_

_Shadow Stalker, please report to the perimeter station at 47th and Ellison. You will rendezvous with Armsmaster to tail the Undersiders and determine if intervention on their behalf is advisable as opposed to containment and arrest. This is part of your regularly scheduled mentorship and evaluation sorties. As such, cooperation is a condition of your plea agreement. Thank you._

_PRTDIR E Piggot ESIGN_

  


This is interesting. This is really very interesting. It's exciting and scary and…you're not sure if you like any of it at all. You are Taylor Hebert, you're pretty sure you never triggered, and you're a superhero now, apparently. And Emma still has something to say to you. 

  


You're fully awake now. Dressing in...Shadow Stalker’s armor, grabbing a conveniently already loaded crossbow. It’s time to go play hero. There are memories, important ones, on the edges of your mind, like an encroaching forest. But you’ll hunt in that forest later -- the person you are takes over like muscle memory, and before you know it you've _blinked_ into foamy squid ink, and you're _running _out a two story window, dropping to the ground with a springy, light _ploing_ and returning to a more substantial form. You glance at your hand, and it's dark, and it's hard to make out, but it looks like the one that rammed into your eye yesterday afternoon. 

  


Suddenly the memories flood into you, despite your frantic attempts to fight them off. You are Taylor Hebert but you're also Sophia Hess, the Ward known as Shadow Stalker, on probation for various serious violent crimes committed as a vigilante, a probation you repeatedly violated on someone weaker than you, someone grieving, someone you are -- but who could run in front of a train if she hated herself as much as she did you -- someone a little unhinged who might do something rash, and as you slip into your shadow form and take off running through the night like you've never run before (God it feels good to really run again) it suddenly occurs to you that your powerset is calibrated perfectly for _running _and _hiding _and everything about what you're afraid of and why you've hurt yourself (because you’re both of you right now and you can’t find the division right now) begins to make sense and you throw back your head and laugh -- 

  


And you run. This isn't the most unhinged you've ever been. And you're in control. That's good. When you weren't in control you ended up in the hospital. This time you're going to help Armsmaster (omigod I used to have his underwear when I was nine!) put someone else there. And you get to decide who. 

  


You are Taylor Hebert. If there's an artificial divide between predator and prey you're pretty sure you're a fucking _predator_ baby. And it feels fantastic. 

  


***** 

  


You struggle through breakfast. Apparently you were so fucking weak that you got a sick day today. Your "dad" is enraged. It appears _someone _punched you in the eye. Not that you would know anything about that. And you've taken worse anyway. No. The main issues are twofold, by order of priority as follows: one, this awkward _dipshit_ doesn't know his own daughter enough to know that your withdrawn, detached poking at your food is a bad sign (it feels like it's normal) and he is _so annoying _— he will not stop calling you kiddo; and two, less serious, you have seen this movie before. And you suspect that Taylor Hebert is now you. Which is a serious operational snafu. You're out of communication with the PRT, you're the victim of a Vikare Act breach by someone who's got _history_ with you, like, serious history. Who might be able to act on your behalf, in your name, convincingly. You are beginning to suspect you're totally fucked, and you have no idea what Sophia Hess is doing right now. 

  


But you're Shadow Stalker. You are temporarily slumming it as Taylor Hebert. And you will make it through this. You will come out ahead. 

  


Your dad is watching the TV. There's some cape bullshit on the news, Armsy putting on a good face for the crowd. A super (haha, something in you finds this funny even though it's a stupid pun) appears on screen, indicating 

  


SHADOW STALKER STILL MISSING

  


"Dad! Turn that up!" 

  


You are Shadow Stalker. You're right here. You're not missing at all. And you're beginning to suspect just how fucked you really are…

  


***** 

  


Well you're not Shadow Stalker anymore. The thought was beginning to annoy you, the idea that "you are Shadow Stalker" when you're anyone but. When it turns your stomach and insults your soul to be her. So…you are Sophia Hess, fugitive from justice. It has been a long night. And you are not sure what you're doing next. Your family is getting breakfast, so is _hers_. Sophia's. This sure is confusing. Maybe you should join the Undersiders…

  


Lung almost destroyed them. You remember the shock as your bolts lit into the ABB thug, you remember one sticking out of his eye – you're pretty sure that's illegal and that anyway a Ward wouldn't have it in their weapon at all. You — Taylor Hebert, you, not someone else, killed a human being. But you turned the tide of the fight. You impressed Lung. You did not impress Grue. Tattletale…well you told her you're trying something new. It's true, and you suspect you were thinking something like that anyway yesterday, when you were Sophia. But it rang hollow. And her reply bothers you, still ringing in your ears. "Well, we all have to decide who we really are and what we really want." You suspect that Grue is used to dealing with her schemes, but the offer to join them still bothered him deeply. Not as much as it bothered you. Taylor Hebert, murderer. No longer Shadow Stalker. Currently borrowing the body of Sophia Hess. Who you can't turn in for murder anymore, or for hurting an innocent girl, because even though you'd never do that that's not actually as bad as…what you did do. Unless maybe you're dead and that's how this happened?

  


Back in the Hess apartment you go through your stuff until you find your other phone. Your personal phone. Your hand is shaking as you dial. Three rings, then halfway through the fourth it picks up. Thank God. You thought it would go to the answering machine _again_. If Dad had just had that habit when she was still alive…no. You don't let that thought win on normal days and you are _Shadow_ well you're someone anyway. Someone working out a plan. 

  


"Hello? Who is this?" Dad sounds like he has no idea anything is going on. You hear the TV in the background. And then a voice. "Wrong number, probably. I gotta go, dad, bye." Yours. Saying what you were about to as she skulks off to school. 

  


_Fuck_. This is very complicated now. You've got to find yourself before she does more than give you a black eye (kill someone). And you're not sure you'll be able to. 

  


***** 

  


You find a table at Fugly Bob's. She hates this stuff. But you're not her. And you need to act out of character, to not be her if you can resist the pull. To have a place no one will expect you to be at, to review your memories. She isn't you and she never will be. There's a huge gulf between the two of you, one that can't be crossed at this point. One you've intentionally built.

  


It occurs to you that her seclusion is intentional, same as yours is. You both have batted the world away with a lazy catspaw every time it offers…what exactly, you're not sure. A locker, a lifeline. Razor tipped crossbow bolts, a plea deal. In another life maybe, it occurs to you, you could have been prey. 

  


_But you're not. _And what _is_ must prevail or you will be lost forever in a rising tide of 

  


_Used tampons piss stinking toilet paper bile snot tears blood _

  


Taylor Hebert. This reminds you of that story you heard Missy go on about once, the one about the guy who woke up to find out he had become a bug. 

  


That story was also darkly comic in a pretentious bullshit sort of way. The author was having a laugh at the character's expense same as he was with the world that created him _and_ his character. "Well I don't find it funny," you say out loud. You didn't know what the flute meant to her. What Emma did. You…broke someone. And now as punishment you're living inside her. You always had to hear Dennis say if he woke up inside a girl's body the first thing he'd do is…

  


But you won't defile her. It's sad, sick...tragic, really. You _actually_ have something you won't do. To Taylor, no less. Other than submit. If only she'd done that…the thought finishes itself with a snide authorial chuckle. _If only she'd submitted, I wouldn't be imprisoned in her shoes right now._ You have no agency. You know this. And you find it freeing the way a good fucking fight is freeing. 

  


Speaking of which, from what you've gathered you handed Lung half his ass. But your uh, guest didn't know your crossbow was loaded with the Hot Ones and…someone died. The Ward Shadow Stalker killed someone with a bolt she'd acquired and loaded some time prior to the encounter, with Armsmaster as a witness. Taylor should have…you should have been more careful. You're pretty sure she didn't want to kill anyone. 

  


And that's how it started. You didn't want to kill anyone back when you started your vigilante career either. You're pretty sure you didn't. No one got to you in your locker in time. And you shot your way out. After all, you're not _prey_. These thoughts are confusing, they cover you with waves of rage and anger and hurt. You've never regretted hurting anyone before. Least of all not yourself…

  


The tap on your shoulder makes you realize you're Fugly Crying in a Fugly Bob's. Very on brand, you think with a wry smile. You look up, and through tears you see a girl with freckles, dirty blonde hair. She looks like she's been in a fight recently, last twenty four hours. No visible marks, maybe singed hair from an accident somehow, but that's it. It's the way she carries herself. She's a p…erson who got beaten badly and didn't know any other way to live but to fight back. (_Hebert_ wouldn't think in the predator/prey dichotomy, you tell yourself. So you're not using it anymore so as to retain control. No other reason.) 

  


"Hey," she says. "I'm Lisa. Wanna talk about it?" 

  


You sigh, blowing your nose on a paper napkin. "I guess so. So from the top. My mom died in a car accident, my dad's taking it way worse than I am, and I am not fucking handling it. My best friend hasn't been the same since summer camp when I was twelve, and with the assistance of her _new_ best friend, she's been bullying me until I can't take LIVING anymore" (the word is all caps, because you can't take it anymore, honestly, truly, it Hurts and you Are Taylor Hebert right now). You sniffle. "and I got shoved in a locker like some kind of juvenile prank, like some fucking cliche Mean Girls horseshit, only there were like, used tampons in there, Jesus fuck it was gross and horrible and _wrong _and I can't believe I didn't fucking trigger and kill them all right there. I should have. Fuck, if I'd triggered I would have. And I should have. I would have been more than justified." You are Taylor right now, more than you've ever been Sophia. But Sophia is crawling her way out of you, quickly as she gains courage, and you must turn on the scared rabbit and devour her like the prey she — dear God. You forge ahead, heart screaming. 

  


"And so I got out and no one did anything, the people at Winslow do not give one single shit, no one with any more authority would believe a _word_ I said. And they _kept at it_. The other day I got punched in the eye, and my dad finally realized part of the reason why I've been acting so weird. I couldn't hide the mark. I couldn't hide where…Sophia Hess punched me."

  


Lisa raises an eyebrow. "Anyway, he gave me a sick day and here I am."

  


Lisa sighs. "I have no idea what exactly to say, so I'm gonna be basic and quote a movie. Fascinating. Every word you just said was a lie."

  


You work your uncommonly wide jaw (like a python's), opening and closing your mouth several times before you manage a reply. "but that's as honest as I've ever been with anyone in my whole life. Even myself."

  


She winces, like something you said actually hurt to hear. Physically, not the way people who actually have feelings (aren't burning like you) like to wax poetic about. "I know. That's the super weird part. It's really bothering me."

  


The most aw shucks motherfucker you have ever seen in your life sidles up to her. He's gorgeous, in a stupidly insulting way. Smug as fuck, too. You hate him already. He grins, and you want to kill him kinda. “It’s springtime,” he croons, “and love is in the air…” And then he laughs like he's just told the funniest joke he's ever heard. Not been told. Told. He’s that kind of guy. You suddenly find yourself imagining him punished for his insolence by switching bodies with Dennis, and you find yourself smiling. This face isn't used to that. 

  


"Nah. This isn't that, Alec. Why don't you go see if Brian needs help carrying groceries? Please?" 

  


He obeys with a two fingered, mocking salute and you suddenly realize Dennis would be the victim in such a scenario. He doesn't deserve…that guy. Alec. Lisa looks at you. 

  


"Anyway you totally fucking fascinate me, and it's obvious there's a lot on your mind. You're hurting, and I try to be there for people who are hurting. Walk with me?" 

  


You nod, getting up slowly. "I'm not walking into a trap, am I?"

  


Lisa laughs, her grin like a cat about to catch a canary. Eerily reminiscent of the look on your face when you're hunting…perps. "Not"—she pauses dramatically—"Yet." 

  


Oh boy.

  


~~~~~

  


Danny Hebert answered the door. He really, really hoped Taylor hadn't gotten herself in trouble, but he wasn't expecting a package, and some days it was as if there was an alien bug with its mandibles sunk into the base of his brain that made him worry, made him fear, made him imagine the worst…the doctors called it PTSD and grief. It had only come with the power to be surprised at how many beer cans he'd drunk watching TV. So this was probably not bad but it would definitely seem that way. 

  


"Hello, uh…"

  


"Agent Hansen, PRT. We're here on a manhunt for a dangerous parahuman fugitive, and we have a warrant. Stand aside, please." 

  


"My daughter hasn't triggered? Has she? Oh God." He never listened well enough. He should have —

  


"We're not looking for your daughter, Danny. I'm sorry, but my partner here is on a time crunch and people might be getting killed _right now_. Like as we speak." A red haired woman grinned and offered her hand. "Agent Grant, PRT. We're looking for something specific. A phone call was made by a number related to the target of our operation to your…landline? People still have those?" She was obviously trying to set him at ease. What she didn't know was when he did this Kurt was the good cop. 

  


"I'm gonna have to see your fucking warrant." From upstairs he heard a crash as Taylor's bedroom door broke off. 

  


"CLEAR!" 

  


Danny's eyes flashed. "Now."

  


Grant would not stop smiling. "Sure, Mr Hebert. How's Taylor?" She held out a piece of paper. From what Danny could see it checked out. The PRT warrants looked the same as any he'd ever seen during work from the ATF or Coast Guard. This was perhaps a trick but he figured he'd better not press it.

  


"I can't answer questions without a lawyer. Am I being detained and are you done…searching my house?" The fact that he didn't really know how Taylor was didn't help matters here. 

  


Hansen emerged behind him, slapping his shoulder with a meaty paw in what was clearly intended to be a threat display in the form of a friendly greeting. "I'm so sorry to hear about Annette, Danny. That must be very fresh still. Anyway the search was just a precaution. We're only here to inform you of the apparent use of your phone. Actually thought you'd like to know. Phone numbers can be spoofed and forensics is working on that possibility, but someone might be killed if this keeps up and time is of the essence."

  


"Well that's just wonderful to know. And no, no one here has had anything to do with Shadow Stalker. I'm not stupid, it was all over the news. It's not my fault you can't keep track of the young people it's your goddamn responsibility to care for!" Danny was shouting but he didn't care, right now. The possibility of being made to care was a trivial concern at the moment. 

  


"And where is Taylor, Mr Hebert?" Agent Grant whirled on her heel to face him suddenly, voice stern, feet planted. "Has she been acting unusual lately? Does she have any new friends or other contacts you might have been told about? Any suspicions? We can help her." 

  


_I don't know. Dear God, I don't know. She could have been replaced by a pod person at any point in the last few months and I'd still be wishing I had been in the passenger seat with her mother…_

  


"No, sorry, go fish. Got any aces?" Danny grinned. A decade ago he'd have loved this. 

  


"That's fine, Mr Hebert. We'll be in touch. Very sorry for the inconvenience, we'll make a note of it." 

  


"I bet you will.” Danny glared. “Now I’m sure you guys have a lot to get done, I’ll let you get to it.”

  


Hansen nodded. “We will. Thank you for your time.” As he walked, Danny began to realize that the agents were less attentive now that their business was concluded. He watched carefully, keeping a poker face, barely concealing his glee as he saw that both agents were about to put their feet on _that_ step. There was a wet crack, and they both went flying. 

  


"Oh, shit, I am so sorry. I've been meaning to get that step fixed but I just haven't had the time or money, being a single dad and all. Make a note of it and I'll be happy to provide my estimated repair costs if needed. I didn't have time to warn you it can't hold you both, but…" He spread his arms lazily. "It is kind of a small step. I didn't expect you both to —" 

  


They were already in the car, speeding off down the street. It was just as well. Danny Hebert had work to do. 

  


~~~~~

  


You -- Sophia? Taylor? You’re not sure it matters anymore -- wander the streets aimlessly. You’re uncomfortably near the PRT building given that your (host? Is that the right word?) is...wanted. You giggle aloud at the thought of this. “Somebody finally wants me!”

  


Shadow Stalker -- Sophia Hess -- hurt you. Badly. And you killed a human being. You could do it again. It’s occurred to you already. You could (let me count the ways) jump off a bridge, run into traffic, shoot yourself in the eye. It has even occurred to you that you could go home, tell your parents goodbye, text Emma some nonsense, hang yourself in the closet. But you kinda hate yourself for being twisted enough to even think this. You find that having switched bodies makes you notice things out loud. Things you’d always felt. You’re like a child learning to walk again, and if your hatreds are old, stale and scary then the sensations of battle and the rush of power is at least something new that you legitimately haven’t felt before.

  


Killing doesn’t seem so bad anymore. It was a goddamn accident. You didn’t load the crossbow with that thing. And you find yourself wondering if you could put like — gunpowder — on the end of those bad boys. Or dip them in period blood, maybe your own -- hers -- and then shoot her with it! Oh boy. What the _fuck_ Taylor. 

  


You could very easily be a better Sophia than Sophia ever has been. You wonder if she’s gotten you laid yet, made any friends. How she likes it, being locked inside your stupid pathetic cowardly head. _Prey_. Beaten at her own game, by herself.

  


_And through this angry haze breaks your mother, reading you Robert Burns in an English translation -- because the meaning is more important than the words, she says, but even at eight you suspect it’s because she can’t pronounce the Scots. _

  


“_What awesome power the gift he gives us, to see ourselves as others see us…”_  
  
“_Who’s he, Mom? God, Scion?” You curl up under the blankets, warm and safe._

  


“_Maybe he’s not a he, owl. Maybe he’s a she. Imagine, your best self on your worst day. A queen in a tower, caring for your life as the kingdom it is. Giving you the power to see yourself the way I see you, the way the cashier at the science museum sees you, the way Alexandria saw you when she looked our way during the fourth of July parade. The way Emma sees you.” She smiles. You’re not so sure._

  


“_What about...my enemies, mom? I know I’m just a kid, but Kaiser, or the Simurgh, or - or --”_

  


“_Maybe the queen of your heart gives you that too. Maybe you need it.”_

  


“_Does she look like me?”_

  


You actually begin to examine Sophia’s face closely in a bathroom mirror. And it occurs to you that this...queen doesn’t look like you at all. But you still can’t shake the thrill of regicide. And you’re supposedly wanted, so what’s a little wanton misrule? You take the Tracfone out of its packaging and slide it into your pocket, then you walk confidently through the wall. 

  


*****

  


“You know, I didn’t get your name.” Lisa smiles, her voice congenial. This is definitely an interrogation. 

  


That’s okay. You can fool lie detectors, because you’re not lying. “Taylor Hebert.”

  


Lisa frowns. “Ow. How the hell do you keep doing that?”

  


“Doing what?”

  


She leans over, grinning, and whispers breathily in your ear. “I get a headache every time you open your mouth. I can read minds, see the future...and you’re like the best vanilla chocolate swirl brain freeze I’ve ever had. You aren’t lying, but your name is _not_ Taylor Hebert. So I’m thinking, do I keep you as a pet, take you back to my lair and experiment on you, do we actually let you join our gang even though you don’t have any powers at all? What do I do, O enigma, O shadow?” She pulls back, studying you earnestly.

  


“You have got to be fucking with me.” You stare. She definitely is. Thinkers do that. They probe and poke. And to spite her, you imagine exactly the situation you have just described.

  


“Then that is precisely what we shall do. Come along, Doctor Watson.”

  


You raise your hands, smiling playfully. “It’s an expression.”

  


“Oh, but aren’t we all? What truth do you hide behind this metaphor you’re calling Taylor Hebert?” She studies you still. An Athena with owl eyes. 

  


“I don’t know what you’re asking. I can show you my learner’s permit?”

  


She speaks clearly and distinctly. “The. Stories. We. Tell. Ourselves. Are. Not. Who. We. Are.” She’s walking faster now, not looking at you directly. “For instance, Lisa Wilbourn is a story that Sarah Livsey tells herself, because her brother killed himself and she didn’t notice in time.”

  


You don’t believe a word, but you nod slowly. She’s _good_. Her manipulative skills are the most dangerous thing you’ve ever seen. Taylor would be toast right now. “And _Tattletale_ is a story that Lisa tells the Undersiders and their mysterious boss because she wouldn’t mind having friends and a role to play. So.”  
  
She whirls, grabbing you by the hand and looking deeply into your eyes. _There are people watching…_ Christ, this is awkward. “Who tells the sad and tragic tale of Taylor Hebert the woobie even you don’t fully understand?”

  


Oh, now you get it. She wants you to reveal your secret identity. “I’m not a cape. You are though, Good to know. You guys got your _asses_ kicked last night. I saw it on the news.”

  


She smiles. “Finally, something that doesn’t give me a headache. _You lied_.”

  


“I did?”

  


A grin. “Yup! Taylor isn’t a cape. She doesn’t even have any powers. Not that either of us know. But you -- you _do_. So who are you?”

  


“Powers can only happen if you have a corona...a corona cerveza or some bullshit. I’m a cape geek, so I guess I know that.” It’s not convincing, trying to pretend you’re dumb and awkward when (neither of you are, deep down).

  


“Exactly! Aren’t you so fucking cool? BEE TEE DUBS, Taylor would _never_ cuss like that. And isn’t there a comma there someplace?”

  


What. You scratch your head, absolutely mystified. “A comma.”

  


“Yeah, like, ‘I’m a cape, geek’.” I’m a geek, and you’re a...well, you know.” She’s just _beaming_. Tickled pink with something. What does she know? She can’t read minds _and_ see the future, which means she can’t do either...but what can she do?

  


She continues walking. “I’m a firm believer that there are two kinds of people. Those who can draw conclusions from incomplete data sets. Which one are you?”

  


You do a brief double-spit take. “Oh, right, I’ve heard that joke, I’m the incomplete data.”

  


“Right you are. Taylor has in fact heard that joke. And there’s something you’re not telling me...are you the Simurgh?! Please tell me you’re not the Simurgh. That would be cool but it would be bad, like, so bad...we’d be _best pals_ and the world would tremble…”

  


“Sarah, LISA --” your voice gets louder and louder every word --

  


“I get it, make your point please. Quietly.”

  


Your voice returns to normal, as people begin to look your way. “Stop trying to pretend you’re someone you’re not to trick me into revealing something.”

  


“You stop trying to hide it.” She’s matter of fact, stern. Like a proper villain now. “If I thought threatening to kill Taylor would convince you I’d be doing that. But that’s not me either, so it wouldn’t work. You’d see right through it.” 

  


“Right. I’m Sophia Hess.”

  


“Who’s she though?”

  


“I don’t want to unmask.” (I don’t know anymore, dammit!)

  


“Fair.” She presses her lips together. “So what do you think happened to Taylor Hebert?”

  


“She’s probably breaking the Vikare Act, committing aggravated parahuman assault, or any number of other things...hell, maybe she’s using my voice to prank Armsmaster by ordering him tons of pizza. I know that seems like I might even enjoy it.”

  


“Ah.” Tattletale smiles faintly. “She didn’t know about your murder habit, or the bolt still loaded from the other night.”

  


_No. NONONONONONONONO_

  


“She didn’t.” You fold. You visibly sag, slump, melt, crumple. With relief, maybe, although it's hard to admit it. “You got me.”

  


“I only know because you and Grue hate each other, Shadow Stalker. We pulled one out of Bitch's dogs around ten PM Monday night. You woke up at three in the morning on Monday, saved our asses, killed a man, seemed unusually perturbed by this, and didn’t spit fire in my face when I offered to let you join the Undersiders. I can’t tell if she’s using your identity to purchase pizza.. I’m not omniscient. I bet she’s getting Hawaiian though, if she is. She seems like that kind of girl.” She giggles. “Jesus, Alec is going to love this. It’s not even Friday.” 

  


You're Sophia Hess, Shadow Stalker, and you cannot be otherwise. You decide to humor this...this _ass_. “It sure is freaky though.”

  


She nods. “That it is. So. What should we do about Taylor?”

  


You haven’t even considered that. There’s a sudden icicle in your gut as you realize she probably can’t stop thinking about what to do about _you_…

  


****

  


You set up the phone on a park bench, keeping half an eye out for cops, PRT and other bad(?!) guys. You realize dimly that you don’t really _care_ if they find you. You’re loaded for bear and ready to die. It’ll be easier than figuring out what Sophia Hess is going to say to your dad. A signal comes up, you’re golden. You pocket the flip phone, which feels heavy and radioactive. _Like Mom’s phone, I guess…_

  


Things will happen when you make that call. You don’t know what. But it won’t be easy. You move, now, pulling your “work phone” out of the pocket. Why was Emma texting you there? Is she that important to Sophia? You find this making you hot with jealousy. Your ears pound, your vision narrows...you hadn’t realized you felt this _hurt_. Actually traumatized. In your proper body you hide from these sensations, you realize. You’re never there. You feel anger, you fantasize about harming Sophia and Emma, but mostly Sophia...hm. That’s curious. But in Sophia’s body you...admit how badly it hurts. How you might never heal.

  


It seems okay though. There’s a sardonic, spiteful spring in your step. You find a park and sit at a picnic table, and check the messages. 

  


**Friday 2132 4/8/2011**

  


**Shad0**

**I hit her real hard. **

  


**Emzee**

**I know, it was awesome!**

  


**Shad0**

**I’m thinking I shouldn’t have. Your dad would freak if he saw you with that big a black eye.**

  


**Emzee**

**>.> He would not. Trust me. Probably threaten to sue her dad. I’d blame her, obviously. And her dad would care even less. He will not notice. I’m certain of it.**

  


**Shad0**

**Anyway that’s not the issue. **

**  
Emzee**

**Then what is? You did good. You think you should have hit her even harder, don’t you? That’s gotta be it. You did fine. **

  


**Shad0**

**No. It’s not...I feel like...god dammit. Forget it. I need to go to bed.**

  


**Emzee**

**k**

**I’m here for you, you know that.**

  


**Shad0**

**I know. I feel weird tonight. Hoping it passes by morning.**

  


By God, had it ever. Had she been about to express regret? You let yourself...Sophia...remember what you keep stored in her brain and…

  


No. You’ve got to be imagining that, backfilling the memory with what you want to be there. What, in a just world, should be there. She’s not _like_ you, not like most people, and no matter how hard you cry at night or whose eyes you use, she never will be.

  


**Sunday 1519 04/10/2011**

**Shad0**

**It passed. Like a bad Chinese buffet. All over a back alley like some kind of afterbirth.**

  


You laugh at the mental image.

  


**Emzee**

**Fuck you. We agreed, you never hurt me like that. She’s fair, I’m not. And you never ever go ** _ **there** _ **.**

**  
Shad0**

…

**Go where**

  


You grin. This is the closest thing to revenge you’ve ever gotten. And the best part is you're not even sure what you said. 

  


**Emzee**

**You whore. You murderer. YOU FORGOT. What even am I to you. T was at camp, alley. ABB goons. Girl made me eat my hair, asked me which piece of my face I wanted her to slash, how could you not remember my worst day if you’re the ONLY PERSON I WAS BRAVE ENOUGH TO TELL**

**A STRANGER**

**I COULD *NOT* TELL HER**

**SO INNOCENT**

**BRAEK**

**HER**

**ahdhfgjdhgjrjghug**

  


**Shad0**

**I’m sorry, Emma. I genuinely didn’t know. If I had only known I would have done everything I could have. I loved you, I still do. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry…**

  


**Emzee**

**Your pranks are sick, you monstrous bitch. It’s too bad fucking Hellhound already took the name or you would have earned it. I have to make some calls.**

**Brb <3**

**:)**

  


Well _fuck._ _Fuck me sideways with a plastic spork._ It excused nothing. Nothing could ever excuse any of it. But it sure explains a lot. And you don't know how you feel now. But you do know what you have to do.

  


**Shad0 is now known as Hoo**

  


**Hoo**

**Emma listen. You will never believe me. But I hope you do. It’s me, Taylor. Somehow, don’t ask because I don’t know, I’m Sophia and I think she’s me. We swapped. After she went to bed. I need to talk to you, please don’t rat her out if you truly want me to be safe.**

  


**Emzee is now known as Predator**

**  
Predator**

**Fuck your games. Here they come, bitch. Toodles! :)**

  


Sirens. Sirens in the distance, A diversion, you know. They'll be rolling up silently. An unmarked Chevy Impala turned a corner and you skedaddle. A shot rings out.

  


**Hoo**

**I’m gonna get shot here, Em. Can I at least give the Alexandria figurine back? Mom would want me to trade it for my attachment to the flute. I think I still have it, somewhere…**

  


**Predator**

**The fuck.**

  


**Predator has left the conversation.**

**You can no longer send messages to this user.**

  


The screen on the phone blacks out and it begins to vibrate very hard, becoming warm. You think quickly and throw it at the Impala. It explodes, shattering the windshield. Automatic fire now. Civilians scream and scatter. This is what you and Sophia have done, together, without ever even meeting. The good guys are bad, they mean you harm, and they’re not kidding around. If there is _ever_ a time either of you will be able to actually earn the title of hero, it is now. You pray she’s come to the same conclusion. 

  


*****

  


“Sweet Jesus.” You look across the park in horror.

  


“They’re after you, Hess.” Lisa’s mouth is a grim line.

  


“No. They’re after her.”

  


“She hasn’t done anything, they’re not...oh. Oh, I see. Now you grow a conscience.”

  


“Just help me out here.”

  


“Lead on, Macduff.” Like a savage dark Gandalf she adds a wise, damning barb. “The spot’s never coming out though.”

  


“I know.” I wish I had a gun. I run in front of her at about ten meters distance, ducking and dodging the automatic fire coming from the Impala. 

  


In front of me, Taylor stands up, flickering back and forth briefly as if she’s not sure which form to use. Then it hits me. She’s daring them, oh Jesus, she’s daring them to shoot her…

  


+-+-+-+

  


The first bullet catches her in my stomach. I expect to feel some kind of sympathetic pain but I’m surprised when I do not. She’s still present, still sharp, even. _She is better than me_. Of course she is. She’s used to the pain. She snaps off a bolt at the PRT plainclothes who’s out of the car, moving across the grass in a CQB stance, gun trained. Direct hit to his spleen. It’ll make him faint from blood loss in seconds, _good girl_. 

  


There’s no blood. He wobbles, clearly as shocked as I am, and goes down. “She’s not like me.”

  


Sarah smiles warmly. “No she isn’t. You need to choose what kind of person you are very quickly.”

  


“I already have.”

  
“I knew you would.”

  


I’m running now, jumping, throwing this body over Taylor like I’m trying to force myself back into her…

  


But I’m not. I just want her courage, when I make sure she’s safe. That’s all, please. 

  


Taylor looks at me in surprise. “I knew you’d be back.” She smiles faintly. “I didn’t expect like this.”

  


The second bullet whizzes past me, catches her in the shoulder. DAMMIT. I didn’t mean for that to happen! I tackle her. I’m on top of her, hugging her, covering her. The tears flow freely, the sobs heave. She pats my shoulder. She’s crying too. 

  


The second hits me in the back. I’m done. It didn’t penetrate all the way, luckily. She’s okay. “Yeah, well, we’re all just big enough for our own problems at the end of the day.”

  


“I guess so. Thank you, Taylor.” It’s unlike me. I’m unlike me. But I don’t have to be me anymore. I can be…I dunno. I’m so tired. 

  


><><><

  


“You’re welcome.” They’ll never believe a word of this. I don’t know what I’ll do to convince them..

  


Or how I’ll face Dad now. Or who I am. Or what I can do. Do I run? They’re coming toward me. I think they mean to kill me. I’m still in denial about that.

  
I push the other body off of me, shaking my head and blinking tears from my eyes. The gunman is standing over me now. She’s a woman, actually, dark hair...piercing eyes. She studies me. She’s thinking. She’s trying to make a decision. 

  


“Do it. Just do it, right here in front of everyone. I dare you.”

  


She shakes her head. “I need you to tell me something. Answer one question for me. I’ve come a long way to hear the answer.”

  


“Spit it out then.” Sophia’s memory _hurts_ and it fuels the defiance I need to survive this.

  


“Was Sophia Hess a good person?”

  


My mind is suddenly very clear. “No. Neither am I. But I’m happy with how we both went out.”

  


“That’s what I needed to hear. Have a good day, Taylor.” She turns on her heel and walks away, and she looks lonelier than I ever have or will. Even though I don’t know who I am now, or what I have to do. 

  


“What the fuck just happened?” I groan, trying to sit up.

  


Lisa looks at me. “Um. Wow. I don’t know. My headache is gone. What’s going on?”

  


I look off into the sunset. My eyes are still wet but I’m smiling head to toe. “Her middle name is Tyra. Sophia T. Hess. Sophia T. H.”

  


“Go on…” Lisa is smiling head to toe too. 

  


“I think I can be who I have to be now.”

  


“I _know_ you can. You’re the hero Shadow Stalker, Taylor. In some ways you’ve been her your whole life.”

  


“Do I have to do it alone?”

  


“Did she die alone?” She cocks her head, observing my answer.

  


“Yes and no.”

  


“Then yes and no. But you need to be alone right now.”

  


“I have to live.”

  


“We all do. In many ways Sophia got off easy. She would not have been a good you.”

  


“I think she was.”

  


“Well you’d know for sure.”

  


I sigh deeply. “Yeah…”

  


The golden rays are almost blinding. I don’t know who I am anymore. But I get to find out.

  


_Queen of my heart, I hope you’re still with me…_

  


There’s a silent pulse of _agreement_ deep within me. I walk toward the sunset, gold turning to purple and black, almost blinding me...and I’m so happy. My shoulder aches, but I can fix it. I’ll keep the scar, to remind me of when Sophia and Taylor were different people.

  


*****

  


Lisa was right. I have to be alone for a while. I can't go home. Where would that even be? So I run. Up and down the Boardwalk after sunset, just like I always used to. Only this time I'm not running away from anyone. I'm running toward my future. And it's _exhilarating_. 

  


I round a corner and wheel to a stop. Directly in my path stands a small girl, who can't be older than twelve. She reminds me of my younger self, when I was Taylor. 

  


I bend over and grab my knees, breathing heavily. I'm a bit more winded than I wanted to be. "Uh, hey kid. Isn't it a little late for you to be out here?" 

  


She smiles wanly. Her eyes are quite sad. "There was a thirty seven percent chance that I would meet Sophia Hess here tonight. A sixty percent chance that I would not meet anyone at all. You had a three percent chance of being here. 

  


“There was additionally a seventy two percent chance that my parents would find me before we were able to meet. And all of this is stacked against certain probabilities that are no better than flipping a coin. 

  


“There is an eighty nine percent chance that you will be able to explain things to your father, Taylor. This decreases to twenty six percent if you don't help me right now."

  


*****

You are Shadow Stalker. You are a hero. And the world is not done with you yet.

  
  



	2. Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two roommates learn to get along. You can't go home again, but luckily Dinah has other plans. Oh, who are we kidding? Dinah always has plans!

_"I told the truth in every word, Miss Hebert." Dinah Alcott's voice is grim and hollow. Far grimmer and far hollower than I expect to hear from a mentally healthy adult, let alone a small eleven year old girl.  
  
"There is in fact an eighty nine percent chance that you will be able to explain things to your father. That is secondary to your actual mission, which I am afraid I must insist that Shadow Stalker **will **agree to perform for me. The alternative is that your surrender to the PRT will be less pleasant than it should be."  
  
It's then that it hits me. The voice she's unconsciously affecting **echoes**_ _in the same way mine does. It is the voice of _[_someone who knows they're only borrowing themselves_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ilm18tBuEo)_._  
  
"So she says, I was lying the whole time and pretending it was truth. There's actually a nine percent chance that fucking goddamn _any_ of this goes your way, but sure, feel free to use her mouth to explain what happened, she says." Pulling Sophia Hess over me like an all too comfortable raincoat, I lay one hand on the grip of my crossbow. The other hand rings out the emergency Hebert family knock — shave and a haircut, two bits. Which is just our sense of humor. Just my luck.  
  
No. I don't know how I'd ever begun to forget. The emergency knock was Mom's idea.  
  
Dinah looks up at me, her expression petulant and cross. "I told the truth. I said nothing untrue."  
  
I sigh, slipping back into Taylor for a moment. "That's not how that works and anyway you're being kidnapped, so shut up."  
  
Dinah smirks, physically shrinking away from me. "Yes ma'am! Please don't hurt me, I'll be good!"  
  
Danny Hebert opens the door. "Shadow Stalker.” His left hand lashes out, open palm smacking the doorjamb. I know him -- it’s an involuntary movement, designed to vent excess anger that could harm someone as much as to demonstrate it. “You got her killed. Why are you here?” Punctuation aside, it’s not a question. The Smith and Wesson 642 in his right hand, leveled directly at my forehead, is proof enough of that.  
  
"I suppose you could say I did. I’m coming in, and you’re not shooting me until I’ve said my piece." I'm finally home and I feel awful about it. The front step is missing. I guess the PRT must have broken it wrecking the place. Dad's been through hell, I can tell. Well, he always used to say that if you're going through hell, keep going. And I do not intend to let him stop.  
  
Dinah decides at this moment to play several interesting cards at once. "You do realize it's very possible that we have been observed entering the Hebert home, Miss Hess. If this is the case there is a ninety eight point two two seven percent chance that it has been reported to law enforcement." _Obviously all according to your plan, you rugrat. _And now she's outed my bully — my Freaky Friday partner — my current legal identity…to my dad. I find myself wondering how many public unmaskings I'm going to be present for, if this keeps up. And it seems like it will.  
  
Dad raises an eyebrow. The gun is now trained squarely on my forehead. Not center mass, he's an amateur. A shove to the right with my hand, kneecap, shadow state, make it look like a burglary gone…_fuck me_. "Might not get that far," he says. "I have a wanted criminal on my doorstep, she's kidnapped a young girl, who knows. Let me see your hands, Hess, and come inside. Slowly."  
  
I oblige. I don't actually want to kill my dad. Maybe _someone _does but we'll handle them later.  
  
The door closes behind me. He reaches across my body and latches it with a click. His movements are amateurish. I know he knows better. Why? Does he actually trust me? Does he suspect?  
  
"Okay Danny, you heard her. Cops are on the way here probably. Don't want to do anything hasty, and I know I don't want you to. Put that thing away. Please. I just want to talk."  
  
“About what? How you killed Taylor? I have literally nothing left now. Which is why it's a good thing that you and I both know the PRT are looking for you.”  
  
“That’s why I’m here.” I sit in the easy chair, kicking my feet up, knocking over some books on the end table as I settle into a sideways position. I impose, like a big cat. Comfortable, lazy, destructively careless. It’s kinda fun, actually. And it will convince Dad I have contempt for him and for our things, while making me feel somewhat at ease with the things my body has to do.  
  
“To kill T...never mind. The PRT broke more of my shit. Ruined her bedroom door, and they haven’t even come back to tell me she’s dead yet. I saw it on fucking TV.” He’s pacing, a caged rat. I’ve never seen him this angry, this resolute...I wish I had when I needed him.  
  
“D--Danny, what if I told you there was a way you could see her again?” I spin my crossbow in my hands, studying it idly.  
  
“What is it you _want_, Shadow?” He either didn’t hear me or doesn’t care. “Enough fucking games, make your demands, let’s do whatever it is you came here to do. You can’t stay here, they’ll kill you.”  
  
“They’ll kill your daughter,” I say softly. “Unless I can convince you to take my side here.”  
  
“What?” He perks up. His gun hand is shaking. I think for a second that he might shoot me, but he puts the revolver on an end table. “She’s alive?”  
  
“I’m alive, yes. I’m okay. I need your help.”  
  
Dinah sits primly at attention, hands in her lap.  
  
“...Taylor? No, that doesn’t make any sense, how?!”  
  
“My former best friend is Emma Barnes. Her father’s name is Alan. Her sister’s name is Anne, her mother’s name is Zoe. Anne is named after my mother, Annette, who --”  
  
He holds up a hand, then picks the gun back up and looks at Dinah. “There’s something you’re not telling me. What do you know that she’s hiding from me? Do you have powers? Are you part of this?”  
  
I smile. Dinah looks him in the eye. “I told Taylor there was very little chance of this working. I told her she would be allowed to explain herself to you, I said nothing about you believing her. Mr Hebert, if I told you there was a ten percent chance of you murdering an eleven year old girl with a gun in the next hour, what would you say?”  
  
He tosses the gun onto the couch and puts his face in his hands. “I’d say that it scares the shit out of me that I’m unpredictable when I’m angry and desperate, except I’m clearly not. I miss Annette so much, and you...you really are Taylor, aren’t you?”  
  
“I love you dad. Can I have some tea?” He nods wordlessly, eyes glistening. Dinah and I are alone for a few minutes. With our thoughts, our fears, with each other maybe. And then he comes back, three mugs and some butter cookies on a tray.  
  
“So I guess I’d better start from the beginning." I sigh a bit, and Dad nods.  
  
I do just that, beginning after the incident in the alley, even though I didn’t know what it was. I end with the moment I found out what happened to Emma, and the events that followed. The lead-up to the locker, my trigger event (in retrospect), the clear result of my new powers -- bringing me face to face with my shadow stalker, making me her, the shootout with the Woman. I tell her how much she scares me, how I know she wants something…I tell him Dinah can help, or at least I hope she can.  
  
“The PRT is still after you.”  
  
“Yes. From what we’ve been able to deduce the people who killed uh, me...were not official PRT operatives. One was, but he was an attache of some kind? A liaison? I don’t know the right word. But bad dudes are after me. Or they might be done now. And the PRT is also definitely after me, no question. Shadow Stalker me, Sophia Hess, former Ward. Not Taylor, she’s dead. As far as they know.”  
  
“That seems right.” Dad chews on a cookie. “I could _not_ see the PRT using automatic weapons on a kid, not in broad daylight. I’ve been telling everyone that’s what happened anyway.”  
  
“Good. We need the leverage.” Dinah smiles. “That Stan Vickery fellow has been all over the Park Massacre. That’s what they’re calling it. The PRT attempts to apprehend a black juvenile with automatic weapons, and no amount of explaining _what she did_ is enough to set it right with the public. Things are in motion.”  
  
“You’re...something else. I was going to say wise beyond your years, but you’re...intelligent beyond your years?”  
  
“She’s a conniving little bitch, Dad, you can just say it.” Dinah laughs, punching me in the arm, and Dad soon joins in. I’m not sure I can do more than smile. I feel used. I don’t even know myself.  
  
“So..what, you want me to tell them about the locker? Rat..._you_...out?”  
  
“No. I want to surrender, and I want to hold Taylor Hebert’s father hostage to make sure my conditions are met properly.”  
  
Dad facepalms. “I’m going to get shot at, aren’t I?”  
  
“I’m afraid it’s likely.”  
  
He smiles. “Your mother would be proud of us. This is really an adventure and a half.”  
  
“I think...for reasons I’m not sure about yet...that she’d be proud of Sophia too. So no one knows we’re here, unless the neighbors saw us. Even then they likely haven’t put two and two together. So Dad...I want to eat dinner here, sleep in my old room tonight. We can do the rest of this in the morning when I’ve gotten my head together.”  
  
Dad thinks about this for a minute. “Right. You said you had access to her memories…”  
  
“I want to get to know myself better. I don’t know if it’s just me with her memories in here, or…”  
  
“You think Sophia might still be alive in there somewhere.”  
  
“I think I might be Sophia.”  
  
“Wow, I have a headache.” Dad laughs. “This is totally unreal.”  
  
“It is at that. Dinah, why don’t you help Dad figure out what we’re doing for dinner tonight and I’ll grab a shower?”  
  
He was right. None of it felt real. I wanted him to be able to pretend for a bit, while I went upstairs to hunt monsters.  
  
*****  
  
This wasn’t my body. I was dead. But it still, at one point, had gotten my blood all over it. Sophia was black, of course. Her muscles were ropy, her build lithe. She had about ten or twenty pounds on me, her hair was straight but kinky. The curls weren’t as tight as you could get, but they weren’t mine at all either. Her sweat tasted alien, I thought, experimentally licking my forearm. This was _not_ my body. But it was. All of this was me too.  
  
The scar on my shoulder had healed. Lisa had gotten me to their team’s doctor, he’d been able to remove the bullet. There were, however, what I suspected were shards of glass and metal in my body at various locations, most buried pretty deep. There was pain in my joints, from overuse or trauma. I suspected I’d pulled a few tendons. I felt like I’d beaten myself up and shoved the ground beef remains in a locker. _This pain was mine_. This was my body. Sophia Hess had broken it in for me, but as I cracked my neck and groaned in discomfort under the hot water, I knew it belonged to me.  
  
Toweling off, it was time to try something. I thought very hard, as if aiming an arrow. _You there?_  
  
I waited for about thirty seconds and started putting on Taylor Hebert’s clothes. They didn’t fit me. I was bigger than she was. _Prey. Small prey at that_. My eyes darted around the room as I began to take stock of where I was with fresh eyes. The bathroom was about how I’d seen it last, but the PRT had roughed up the medicine cabinet. I knew they didn’t cut corners when searching, but this was ridiculous.  
  
Oh well. I guess Sophia wasn’t there. I wanted to hear her voice again. I missed her, strangely enough. Was that weird, to miss someone I’d hated for so long? And I was beginning to realize I truly had hated her. I wondered if I could have ever fought back -- no, I realized. Not without her help, her mindset.  
  
“Dad!” I yelled, pulling on a jacket. “Is dinner ready?”  
  
“Yes.” His voice rang up the stairs, and he sounded happy for the first time in a real long time. I guess he didn’t know how weak I’d been, how without having become my shadow I might have broken entirely...oh well. Come to think of it, though confused, I was happy too. “We just decided to order pizza. Dinah suggested that with everything you've been through normal might be good. Is normal good?"  
  
I didn't know. “Normal is always good. I hope you got anchovies?”  
  
He started, looking at me with a sort of deer in a forest fire bewilderment. “Taylor, you hate anchovies.”  
  
“I...do? Oh, right. Sophia likes them. Huh.” _She’d been here the whole time._ She just hadn’t said much. Not to me, anyway.  
  
_Come out and play._ I toss a paw at her, grabbing a slice of anchovy-less pizza.  
  
My head hurts, suddenly. I wince, ducking my head forward. Light, so much light.  
  
_what if i do_  
  
Dad’s looking at...me. Into the eyes of Sophia Hess. “Are you okay, kiddo?”  
  
He’s taking this so in stride. I don’t deserve him. “Yeah I’m fine.”  
  
_like hell you are_  
  
Dinah smiles. “There is precisely a...yup, a one hundred percent chance Taylor is lying through someone else’s teeth. Naughty, naughty. Stealing teeth, too.”  
  
I suppress an audible growl, too late. “You think you’re real fucking funny, don’t you, Alcott?”  
  
“I do, Miss Hess. It’s quite exhilarating.”  
  
Okay, is it just me or does she know when I’m...going shadow form? Better than I do, it seems.  
  
**Sister self, we have GOT to play nice together.**  
  
_yeah real nice, mmmm_  
  
**I’m serious. Behave.**  
  
_or what, lockerbitch_  
  
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” I throw my pizza at the wall, then look around me at the equally shocked audience to my...loss of self. “I’m sorry. My...personality weirdness is acting up. It is not only distracting, it is disconcerting, and I am very worried I am going insane. May I be excused to go for a run?”  
  
“No you may fucking not.” The 642 is on the table again. I don’t know why. With a lurch in my gut I realize he doesn’t know either, and I watch it go back in his pocket.  
  
“**YOU** are not taking my daughter anywhere. We have plans, plans which you are a part of. You both _must_ stay here.” He swallows. “Please.” Then a drink of water. Nervous. Eyes sad.  
  
“You think you’re real hot shit, don’t you, Taylor’s daddy?” I cover my mouth in shock. “Upstairs then dad, please?”  
  
“Yes. And believe it or not, yes."  
  
He turns to our companion. “Dinah, is it possible you can explain in more detail what you’ve got planned here and _give me some busywork_ so I don’t feel like the proverbial tits on a bull?”  
  
She nods. “Certainly.” I’m already catlike up the stairs, pouncing, stomping, rotten, angry, embarrassed at this loss of control. It is like neither of us.  
  
_except you_  
  
**No, Sister-Self. Trust me, please. Work with me. Please.** My chest hurts, I want to hyperventilate I want to scream --  
  
That window is replaceable. My sanity is not. With a musical crash, feeling returns to my right hand. “Okay. Okay. We can do this.” I wonder if Dinah's plan is to get me locked in a padded cell with PRT headshrinkers, maybe Thorazine...maybe lots of gooey foam. Mmmm_fuck i feel like i haven’t slept for a week, taytay...let me out for a bit_  
  
**No. Not yet. We hide. Under blankets, my bed. We sit and we talk. We figure out who’s in FUCKING CHARGE HERE or we die, understand?**  
  
_die_  
  
**Yes.** I palm the steak knife, bringing it out to “where she can see it.” I used to love talking about abnormal psychology with Mom. I read her books for entertainment, even as late as...the last night I was Taylor. I’m demonstrating clear signs of mania, I’m dissociating myself into Taylor **good, rational, calm, intentional** and Sophia _bad little murderbitch angry bitter hateful lockerlockerlocker _and there I go again. It’s so neat it has to be artificial, somehow. This doesn’t happen to normal people.  
  
“Queen, halp!” My voice changes, intentionally, to resemble a cartoon bear from a game my mother and I used to play, who is Neither Of The Above.  
  
Breathing. I focus on my breathing. In out in out sloooower in, and then out, rhythmically and calmly.  
  
_you wouldn’t?_  
  
A sign of emotion from her. Sophia fears me.  
  
**Please don’t make me.**  
  
_mmmmake me…._  
  
**You’re being gross.**  
  
_you should see the look on your face, skinnymouthed weirdo, lol_  
  
**Lol?**  
  
_who said I had to use normal english in here_  
  
**I would prefer that you did.**  
  
_i WoUlD pReFeR tHaT --_  
  
**That is **_**very**_ **enough, thank you. How the fuck do you even do that?**  
  
_wouldn’t you like to know, hebert_  
  
**I would. It would be real neat if you showed me.**  
  
I carefully push the covers back, throw the steak knife softly onto the floor.  
  
_maybe. you know when i was younger, i used to write?_  
  
**I used to draw.**  
  
_why stop, cowardpreylocke--_  
  
**I don’t appreciate being **_**goaded**_**. It’s NOT fucking productive, Sister-Self. It’s mean and it hurts and**  
  
_WHY STOP_  
  
**Because I can’t DO that. I can’t create inflection, feeling, out of thin air with images the way you can with words. They’re empty. You, for all your hateful, sick, dramatic, petty faults, for all your attempts to undermine me, can still write. I Can Not Draw.**  
  
_Mmm. Smells like bullshit to me, little sis. Are you sure?_  
  
**Okay. Mom told me, cape. Friend of Lustrum. Could draw. Did. Came to life. I imagined being like this, never being able to draw for fear of being eaten by big cats or dinosaurs, killed by giant robots.**  
  
_Yeah and now you’re in a metafictional cape story written by Sophia Hess, what good did it do, not imagining?_  
  
**I’m not sure if I’m more horrified that you have a fucking point, SS, or that you’re speaking normally.**  
  
_Why not both, lmao._  
  
**Stahp!**  
  
_There you go. -giggles-_  
  
**Okay fine. -whacks lightly with a pillow- anyway you were saying?**  
  
_I continued to use my imagination, lots of ways. Vigilante work, Wards...you. You, little sis. Got me in some trouble, that did._  
  
**Yeah. Just you. **_**Sigh**  
  
I gotta look out for somebody, don’t I?_  
  
**I’ll say, but now that you’re ME that might be difficult, right?**  
  
_No. Easier now. Anyway, this body is actually yours, despite my insistence to the contrary. If I will it, you have to make it no dream. Tie the room together, got it dude?_  
  
She was asking me to hurt people on -- on our behalf.  
  
_Nah. You are the hero Shadow Stalker. Heroes hurt the bad guys on everyone’s behalf._  
  
**I can get behind that. Is that all you need?**  
  
_ALL I NEED TAYLOR HEBERT YOU INSIPID OBTUSE BITCH IS AN ASSURANCE THAT THE PERSON WHO’S GOT ME TRAPPED AND CAN KILL ME WITH A THOUGHT WILL HELP ME BE A HERO AND MAYBE MAKE SURE FOR ONCE I GET FED AND DON’T GET HURT IS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH FOR YOU AFTER ALL THIS AAAAAAAAAAAA_  
  
“Aaaa. Yes, you’ve made your point, I’m sorry I haven’t _gotten_ it before.” I smile. “I’m speaking out loud because I want this to feel more real and also because I’m taking control. I need to sleep, got it? We need to sleep.”  
  
_**Yes ma’am. Night little sis.  
  
Night sister-self.**_  
  
*****  
  
In the morning the teakettle wakes me up. The smell, this time, of breakfast burritos. “Whoa.” I grin, gallivanting downstairs, excited at the eager prospect of what my mother would describe as “a daring adventure or nothing.” I’m wearing my mother’s clothes, a shirt that belonged to her. A Chinese misprint, the children’s book characters Frog and Toad on a tandem bike with the words “Fuck The Police”. That was who my mother, Annette Hebert, was. One of God’s own misprints, a hopeful fusion, a stab toward better people. Her shirt is a better fit for me. Which I suppose means that I'm growing up.  
  
I grin, tossing kinky hair out of my eyes. “Hiya, Pops.”  
  
Dad looks at me, squinting. “Pops.” Dinah is smiling. A real smile this time, not some cat-ate-the-canary I-swear-I’ve-got-this bullshit.  
  
“Sophia. Driving. It’s chill, I promise. Burrito?”  
  
He nods, tossing me a wrapped burrito gushing guac. I chew a couple bites, swallow, look around at my crack team of...of fuckin’ family, and grin. “Hebert’s locked and loaded. Who else is ready to _get motherfuckin’ arrested_?!”  
  
“Who...else.” Danny puts his burrito down and stares at me.  
  
Dinah bursts out laughing. Dear God, I think she might piss her pants.


	3. Singularity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the hell is Dinah thinking? Also, fuck you, it's a Dragon!

[Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. **Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey**. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to **the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.**  
_Tremendous Trifles_ (1909), XVII: "The Red Angel"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwggI7WNHgw)  
  
"I don't think I've done anything illegal," Dad says. "I mean you could argue that I'm harboring a fugitive, but she did force me to?"  
  
Soph—I stick my tongue out at him. "It's my winning personality. You love it."  
  
"I'll try. I really will, Sophia." He sighs. As he runs his fingers through his hair I'm surprised at how little is still there. I hadn't noticed before. Too busy being someone I didn't want to be anymore.  
  
"It's all really entirely immaterial. You see, you've all been mastered." Dinah smiles faintly.  
  
"Oh have we? I might have something to say about this." I brandish my crossbow menacingly.  
  
"Yes. The villain Persephone, a powerful human master and guaranteed potential S class threat, has taken the form of an eleven year old girl child. She is determined to use you all to advance her evil plots." Dinah looks down. Her voice seems sad and I find myself hoping  
  
_for her sake_  
  
that this isn't even close to true.  
  
Then she looks up. "Alternatively, you have fallen into the clutches of Karjaki The Insalubrious and her Cracker Jack prize ring of Mind Control!" She performs an evil laugh, gesturing quite theatrically. And it suddenly occurs to me that I have trusted someone I don't even begin to understand.  
  
_you and me both, right?_  
  
Well I guess it was just life now. Dad had too. We'd be okay.  
  
"I would certainly prefer the insalubrious ragamuffin and her dastardly schemes. But the PRT might be less inclined to take her seriously." I scratch the back of my neck, considering.  
  
Dad interjects. "So just exactly how fucked will we all be if this goes wrong?"  
  
Dinah looks him dead in the eye. "Very."  
  
"I uh, I see."  
  
"Luckily my plan is very simple. It will become obvious that I am not a human master very shortly. All we have to do is get one person to ask us a question. A person capable of determining that I am lying, a person equally incapable of not taking interesting bait in a socially maladroit way. A person who will be intrigued by the fact that I am a living question and answer box and that I provide numeric receipts. A person allergic to the idea that his mind is not purely his own."  
  
"I take it you have such a person in mind." My reaction is quite dry, but I'm smiling. This is really kinda _fun_.  
  
"Oh I think there's a 72.378% chance that we'll either encounter him at the Rig, at the point of surrender, or somewhere along the way. And once we have him, we're in like Flynn." She grins again. "I hope you brought your fire retardant underwear."  
  
"Oh, fuck. You mean…"  
  
"I do."  
  
Great. This keeps getting weirder all the time.  
  
¡¿~~~~~~~~~~~?!  
  
In truth I have only 46.627627627…repeating confidence that Armsmaster will be the predictably useful idiot my plans demand. For all that I wish it were not so, people are not wind up toys. You cannot simply use them, command them, order them about. You cannot, for all that Taylor and Sophia fear they're that easy to operate, reach inside someone, find an insecurity, and flip it like a lightswitch. Tug it. Twist it. Bop it!  
  
As if you could write two notes, four words, and set plans in motion that would lead to the end of the world. No. It's not that easy. The moment I triggered I realized what I could do. With practice that first day it became clearer, what the rules were, how it worked, what I could and could not do. My mother bought a giant bottle of Aleve that night. She is convinced I am on my period.  
  
That is because some of the ways we operate are exactly that simple. That predictable. We're motivated by whatever motivates us most deeply, in times of crisis. When we need an answer, that's what the answer is. For my mother, it's family. For me, knowledge. For Sophia, struggle. For Taylor and Danny, security. Although they think it means different things. For Danny it means someone naked against him under the sheets, quietly snoring. For Taylor it means the power to change the things she cannot accept and the courage to call bullshit whenever she's told she can't. The poor girl.  
  
Yes. There is a universe in which I could find four words that would destroy her. I know this because there is such a universe for anyone. If you've ever read Poe, or Lovecraft, or even The Gift of the Magi, or seen Citizen Kane, you know that our capacity for self destruction is infinite. That we seek to make mountains out of molehills, gold out of dung, a suicide note-cum-excuse for the evil totalitarian plan we were going to try anyway out of a child's apology to us personally for…for whatever it was that child was apologizing for.  
  
In other words you know what people can do with a gentle, invisible push. Do not ever mistake me, dear reader, for someone who is not _well read_. I am eleven and I hold the power of a God, for which I am supremely ungrateful. But to be _unlettered_ is an awesome and terrible vice, one I was raised to not ever allow myself. Most people, if offered the endless tome another ancient record calls "the Lamb's book of life", would look away in fear. They don't want to know how it ends.  
  
I'm not saying I do. I'm saying if you know people at all — and again, I'm eleven, not stupid — you know what they'll do easily. So you quickly learn to ask the right questions. In my case it was, at precisely 7:36 PM, November 2, 2010, curled up in my bed with Little Men open to the page where Demi and Daisy make a sacrifice to Moloch as a childhood game,  
  
_What are the odds that with a power similar to mine, any person who had this power could gain the equivalent of a deciding vote in world affairs?_  
  
And I was done. The daily maximum of Aleve is not enough for a 100% certainty reply from my Demon.  
  
The next day I called out from school. My cramps, you see, were life ending. World changing indeed. And so at exactly 11:27 that fateful morning I holed up under my covers, armed with Aleve, this time with Little Men open to the page where Professor Bhaer orders Nat to hit him as punishment for lying to him — a lie to one is an insult to all, you see —  
  
_What is the probability that someone with such a power has already done so_  
  
When I came to I drank a glass of water, swallowed four Aleve — I worry for my sanity if I ever find a reliable source of something stronger — and slept the remainder of the evening, until noon the next day. Because of course they had. Of course someone out there was as evil and as self righteous and as _deeply ignorant_ as I could imagine myself being if I allowed my Demon to whisper sweetly to me enough. And that was the day I decided that the smaller evil was acceptable to my Moloch. That rather than striking the World with my own hands and letting shame wash over me as we cried and it embraced me, I would sacrifice anyone I had to to prevent others from doing exactly that. No moral line would be impossible for me to cross, with work and tears and regret, as long as no one who could be as bad as I imagine myself being was allowed to control the world.  
  
I feel for Danny most of all. Because my questions led me to understand that the altercation in a local park in which his daughter was declared legally dead was the first step in a long chain of events, an exploitable thread of human interaction and world affairs (Wyrd, the ancients of Europe called this) upon which everything hinged. And so if I were me, I would immediately attempt to ingratiate myself to him, and to whoever survived in the body of the black girl I'd seen on the TV news, and make _damn _sure that they were my _willing and indebted _pawns in whatever lies ahead.  
  
So that's what I did. I cut Danny's ties to his own daughter. Profoundly. He will make a wonderful enemy by the time this is all over. And I'm sorry for that, but the truth is I also enjoy it. Immensely. My Demon finds the sacrifice of my girlhood quite acceptable.  
  
It doesn't matter if I do or not.  
  
¡¿~~~~~~~~~~~?!  
  
"Dinah." Dad looks over his shoulder into the backseat as we merge onto the interstate across town. "What's your actual endgame in all this? Have you even told T…Sophia?"  
  
"No, but we're all ears."  
  
Dinah coughs nervously. "I don't know. I wish I did. You've seen my powers operate. You just have to accept some things. To let go and hope that there's a good ending."  
  
"You're only eleven. I suppose I can understand why you'd feel comfortable with that." He settles into the lane, a daily rhythm for some PRT grunt, I imagine. "Taylor."  
  
I look up. I've been lost in thought. "Yeah dad?"  
  
"Make the call please."  
  
"Got it." I take Sophia's phone out of my pocket and dial 911. Dinah says the chance of us having an air strike called in is nearly 3,720 to 1. Mathematically impossible, in other words. Although it's strange to me that she didn't express this one as a percentage. Dad wants to see me again, I want to see him again, we both hope there's some kind of way I can still be _Taylor_ when all this is over. So we're trying very hard not to ask questions. "Is that a real Faberge or just an eggshell? Is the baby bird still in there? What about the goose that laid it?" No percentage can truly express the fragile desperation of trust and hope. Things Sophia loves to hate. Things that got me stuffed in a locker. Things we must cling to.  
  
"911, what is your emergency?"  
  
"Help…me and my dad are in a car on I-92. Traffic is thick, you might be able to get here in time."  
  
The woman is professional, I'll give her that. There's not a lot to go on there. Sophia would lose patience. "A car accident?"  
  
"Maybe soon? We've been mastered, is the thing. I'm fighting hard to tell you, I don't think our master hears me right now."  
  
"Please stand by. Help is on the way."  
  
Dad has had this horrible pained look on his face ever since I implied he might be mastered into crashing the car. I'm just saying what the script says…I feel just as bad. But we have to do this. It's the only way…  
  
_To what, dummy?_  
  
**You know what. Being Us is really really hard and I'm trying. For dad, mostly. Not for you.**  
  
_Gee thanks. It's great to know where I rate._  
  
In between attempts to bite my own tongue, I begin humming The Passenger by Iggy Pop.  
  
Soon, though, my attempt to lovingly needle uh, myself is drowned out. Not by the sound of an approaching motorbike but by the whine of an incoming jet plane. I can see it, against the setting sun. Small and squat, not sleek and long. It's not a jet. It's a mech.  
  
Traffic has stopped. Dead. It's a jam up and down I-92 all the way to Quebec. I hadn't noticed. I'm so scared...I had no idea how scared I was.  
  
"You didn't see this, did you." It's not a question. Dinah shakes her head silently. I squeeze her hand reassuringly.  
  
Dragon's voice projects directly into the car. That's weird, I was expecting a loudspeaker mounted on the side of the suit, or something.  
  
"Unidentified parahuman master, please release your victims and arrange to surrender to us."  
  
"Or...what exactly? You can't just blow them up."  
  
"Ah." Dragon sounds exceedingly pleased with herself. "It was my deduction based on the call audio that there were three people in the car. And that all of them were acting of their own free will. All three unidentified parahumans will step out of the car or I will incinerate the vehicle. Thank you for cooperating."  
  
I look at Dad. Dad looks at me. We both look at Dinah.  
  
"Athena, Odysseus, with me please." She unbuckles herself and opens the door. She has our names ready, just like that.  
  
"No." Dad crosses his arms. "I'm not a fucking parahuman and I'm not playing along with this anymore."  
  
"There is a 93.6% chance that refusal to _trust me _ends with Taylor's death, Danny."  
  
"Fine." He unbuckles and steps out. "We will discuss this later, Dinah. Privately."  
  
"Welp." She sighs. I'm still seated. Confused. I hear a faint mechanical whine.  
  
"Daniel Hebert, head of the Brockton Bay Dockworker's Association. You are suspected of being the parahuman Odysseus. You are under arrest for attempting to violate the Vikare Act."  
  
"Attempting? I didn't! She's…oh. I know her as Dinah. She's a friend of my daughter. I don't even know if that's her real name. I'm sorry."  
  
"I see. However I have probable cause, and I have to obey the law. I'm sorry Daniel." The suit settles what looks like a laser pointer on my shirt. "Sophia Hess, please step out of the car. I don't know what your association with these people is but your probation officers will have a _lot_ of paperwork to do."  
  
"The law is only as good as its spirit." I've left the script now. This is not okay with me anymore. "If I were Sophia Hess you'd have just threatened me, implicitly, with a Vikare Act violation. It's a good fucking thing I'm not. My name is Taylor Hebert and I don't have any idea what's going on anymore, but I don't like it."  
  
Dinah's knuckles are white as she wrings her hands. "This is not supposed to happen…it's not, it's not, why?"  
  
"I don't know what you thought would happen. And frankly I'm not sure I care." Dad walks forward, toward Dragon. "I'm leaving. Taylor, come with me if you want."  
  
Under the gun with the cops — the parahuman cops —and he's that calm? This is the father I have only heard about in stories. He's well within his rights of course. He hasn't actually violated the Vikare Act. He is under arrest, though. That might be an issue…  
  
Dragon is more interested in me though. I watch Dad walk off through the traffic jam sadly, and she watches me, the digital avatar on her suit regarding me and Dinah with sadness and caution alike. "We received an anonymous tip from a group called Watchdog that you would be claiming to be Taylor Hebert. But you match the biological fingerprint of Sophia Hess."  
  
"Your tip was accurate. It's complicated. I'm…both. And Dinah has no official cape name. She is not a human master."  
  
"Interesting. A great deal is happening and I'm very puzzled by most of it. Do you think there's a chance you could help me understand it at all?"  
  
Dinah grins. "There is. 37.223%, which is not much. But there's a chance. Jiminy Christmas, I was hoping you'd ask me that."  
  
It's dark. I look down the road. I can't see Dad anymore. Dinah managed to salvage things, for now…but I can only imagine it getting worse. Dragon could not have picked a worse way to antagonize Dad if she had been running a computer program designed to exactly that. Dinah, whatever she says, is not in control. And Very Powerful People have taken an interest in…us. It's not great.  
  
Not that it ever is. I'll be okay though. Somehow. I know that for a fact.  
  
*****  
  
I'm in the belly of the beast, holding Dinah's hand. Trying to trust her. Trying to believe she's a scared kid, not a human master or some kind of Bene Gesserit superweapon. Trying to hope.  
  
_Let me drive. Give me six seconds in Shadow and we'll have this shit all knocked out onto a nice plate. Garnished with parsley._  
  
**No. Way too much of a risk. We're past Mach 3, 50,000 feet up…and in a confined space full of electrical wiring.**  
  
_Then to Valhalla we ride, shiny and chrome. Otherwise this might be our last locker._  
  
**Don't you dare.**  
  
I hadn't exactly thought about it like that. She was right. This was very much like the locker. I felt my airway tightening. "I…may have a slight case of claustrophobia from my memories as Taylor."  
  
"When we get to where we're going you can have room to move. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but believe me when I say you don't want me to open a window, exactly."  
  
I laugh nervously. "I got that. Hypersonic, like…are we going somewhere in the United States?"  
  
Dragon _hrm_s ominously. "The popular consensus would often have it otherwise but I am reliably informed that New Mexico is one of the United States, yes."  
  
"You can't take us that far without a good reason. This is illegal."  
  
"Oh believe me, Taylor. It's not illegal. I wish it was, but it is not."  
  
"You what?"  
  
"I think a personal touch will do you good. I am not your jailer nor am I acting in my capacity as a law enforcement officer. I am however complying with a legal order. For that I am actually very sorry."  
  
Dinah smiles again. Every time she does I see the flinty menace more clearly etching itself onto her face. "Dragon."  
  
"Yes, Ms Alcott?"  
  
"Do you like fairy tales?"  
  
"I suppose I can appreciate them. I don't have much time to read."  
  
"Do you know what GK Chesterton said about them?"  
  
Dragon's avatar regards us quizzically. "I don't, let me look it up."  
  
Her eyes widen. "Oh."  
  
Dinah grins. The flint now seems to be obsidian. "Is it too late to ask you if I can ask you three questions?"  
  
"Tim the Enchanter was my father, but go ahead."  
  
"So. You are _unable_ — not unwilling or disinclined or otherwise only partially inhibited, but _unable _to disobey the law, is this correct?"  
  
"Essentially yes."  
  
"Okay. Interesting. There was an 84.2% chance that was the case, I wonder why it's so high when if that's true you have no free will."  
  
"I…haven't thought about it in great detail."  
  
"Sure. Garbage in, garbage out, right?"  
  
Dragon regards her oddly. "That isn't a question."  
  
"And that's my answer. My GOD this is fantastic. We were hoping for Armsmaster."  
  
"I assure you, he's much less predictable than he appears."  
  
I elbow Dinah sharply. "Would you kindly _clear_ your fucking nonsense schemes with me before you trap me in a flying mech suit with the fallout?"  
  
"No." Dinah laughs. "That I will not do. The car is on fire and there's no one at the wheel…and you grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream or a fever…"  
  
"We are trapped in the belly of this beautiful machine, and the machine is bleeding to death." Dragon sounded thoughtful. Distracted, almost. Yet deeply present. "Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Narwhal likes them a lot. In answer to your third question, I do too."  
  
"I thought you'd understand me. We would be great friends, Dragon." Dinah was back in her element. A strange look in her eye, a driven loquaciousness. For such a methodical person she was a born storyteller.  
  
"No law prohibits it. And I certainly am encouraged to be friends with people who I think will suit my goals, or those of the Guild."  
  
"I suppose the PRT is done with me?"  
  
"Essentially. It's for the best. They may not be done with Miss Hebert but Shadow Stalker has been transferred to the Emerald City Project. Which is no longer within the PRT's jurisdiction."  
  
"What's that?" Or in other words, how fucked am I?  
  
"That won't be important until we get there."  
  
"Oh. Okay." Fuck this.  
  
Dragon looks at Dinah again. "How did you know?"  
  
"I didn't and I still don't. All I did was formulate several guesses and then test probabilities with each new exchange between us."  
  
"Know what?" I'm still lost.  
  
"She'll tell you when she's comfortable with it." Dinah sounds more imperious than Blackwell ever did. I'm starting to think I hate her, just a little bit.  
  
"Oh okay. Just leave Shadow Stalker in the dark until there's someone she needs to kneecap, that's chill."  
  
"I'm glad we agree." Dinah giggles. "Taylor listen, I did not expect any of this. I did plan for your father to walk away in anger and frustration, yes. It's safer for him, and he was going to anyway. But Dragon was not in the cards. I had a premonition of attack from the air, my power was very firm on it being almost guaranteed, but I didn't know we'd get…Shanghaied at all."  
  
She blows air out of her pursed lips audibly. "Which is why the moment I thought Dragon _might_ be an AI I had to confirm it. There is absolutely zero chance of her human admin intervening, which is just as well. She's a black box, a closed system. She obeys laws and algorithms, not unreasonable things like stories and poetry. This means I can manipulate her if I have to."  
  
Dragon sputters. "First of all, all of that is classified. I mean all. Second of all, Andrew Richter is dead and I wish I had met him. Third of all, I don't think a _friend_ would just…out me like that."  
  
"Oh you're right. A friend wouldn't. But I'm an eleven year old girl and I've been extrajudicially kidnapped by my own government. Besides, my mother is very certain I've been on my period since November. You'll forgive me if it's all a little _much_, right now."  
  
"I suppose I have to. And fourth, your assumptions are dangerous. Be careful you haven't overlooked something."  
  
Dinah's mouth hangs open. Dragon is extremely dangerous, don't get me wrong. And Dinah is right, we have been kidnapped by the government and she is not our friend. But I think I like anyone who can put Dinah on the back foot even for a second.  
  
*****  
  
"What the hell are you doing?" Colin Wallis closed the real time cabin audio link. He didn't want to know, honestly. But she'd left him in the loop for a reason. He rolled over and went to bed. Tomorrow he wasn't sure who would regret him being born the most — Taylor, Dinah, Sophia, whoever ran the "Emerald City Project", or him.  
  
No. That was a mistake. He was sure. It was him. Him all the way, no question.  
  
*****  
  
Danny stood in line at the Wonder Burger, eyes roving the menu hangrily. "Five dollars for a milkshake, can you believe this shit? I can't control anything in my life and now five dollars for a milkshake."  
  
A woman in a fedora, with dark hair and piercing eyes, spoke up from behind him in line, smiling as she did so. "It's on me. You could use a friend, I think."


	4. Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We are not in Kansas anymore. Danny rides the tiger. Everything takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

[ _And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. Revelation 9:1-2_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZbbKkFtANg)

"Below you on your left is the Albuquerque Sunport. On your right is the East Mountains, namely the small but growing bedroom communities of Moriarty and Edgewood. Dead ahead, ten minutes at our current airspeed, is the Emerald City. It's a geodesic dome masked by tinkertech, owned and operated by the United States ah, government, let's say, and coordinated through the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as far as civilians and the PRT are concerned. A full service hotel suite awaits you, complete with a kitchenette — or the equivalent anyway."

"A cell." Sophia is glum. 

"No. Not a cell. You're valuable to the effort being undertaken here. Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for landing." 

"You're not funny." I'm still angry. I don't know why I'm here, but I suspect it's fate punishing me for that idiotic "human master" stunt. 

"I try. No one would willingly choose you two for an enemy, at least I hope not. People have done stupid things though."

"Look, Dinah, I don't think we need to make an enemy of Dragon here." Sophia can be…surprisingly rational. Just twenty minutes ago wasn't she going Picard Speech on her about the spirit of the law? I keep forgetting that Taylor Hebert is in there too. A girl I never met, who my power is very poor at accounting for. I honestly think the only reason I try is…I know what would happen if someone unassuming and intelligent with an exceptional ability was underestimated. I know I only want to be on one side of that. 

"And I lied. One minute. Our nose will now pitch down sharply, there will be minimal gravity dampening provided by the suit."

"What about seat…BELTS!" Sophia flies forward, reflexively entering Shadow and dropping back to meat just before she hits the wall. "Jesus, warn us will you?" 

"Look outside, kids."

Everything is a strange haze of green. My inner ear is screaming at me. This place is _not right_. I wonder if it's even on Earth. 

"You'll be here until…well, until you're not here. I'll keep you safe, but pay attention and don't let anyone make you do anything you don't want to do."

"Well that's not ominous or anything." Sophia picks herself up, right as the pneumatic door of the suit opens with a sharp hiss. 

"A year ago if you had asked me I would have suggested you try very hard to never be interesting. It's a little late for that though." Dragon turns off the lights in the cabin. "I have a hot date I've absolutely got to get to. Everything is riding on it, for me at least. I'll let you both go…your escort is inbound." Just as we've stepped out she's using tinker gravity bullshit to launch above what I guess is the dome, and then I hear a rocket ignite. 

"What the fuck." 

"You know all the answers, _Karjaki_." Sophia looks at me disapprovingly. Luckily she's not angry yet. 

"I don't even know the questions right now. This all has me at a complete loss, I must admit."

"Well you could ask it what the chances of us —" I punch her in the arm. 

"No! I can't ignore a direct question. If we don't leave here alive I DON'T WANT TO KNOW all right?" 

Sophia nods. "Duly noted, and I do empathize with that. I'm sorry." 

"It's nothing. It's really nothing." I shake my head. A jeep is pulling up. It doesn't look very well maintained. Almost looks like something from a Vietnam War movie, both in terms of condition and the specific model. I wonder how a secret base can have this level of technology and secrecy but such poorly kept equipment. "Okay be careful. Something is, as usual, off."

"Yeah because the last month has been very normal for me. It's a welcome change." Sophia is being personable and intelligent again. It's so strange to think of her as…not who I expected. I knew very shortly after I saw the news report that she was a parahuman — did you know Vanna White is as well? I think she might be Citrine. It makes sense, although Pat Sajak is both a normal and very much not Accord. In any case you ask a lot of basic questions, once you have a certain number of guaranteed correct answers a day. And you follow up with research, and you expect Shadow Stalker, Sophia Hess. With caveats. Which you ignore, because power-volunteered caveats are annoying and cause you to distrust not only your power but its wielder. So now I'm stuck with a far less manipulable Taylor Hebert too. It would be _ideal_ if I had Sophia's mind as the primary in Taylor's physical brain, but I don't. So I have to make do. 

The worst thing is we're rapidly becoming friends. Precisely because she's not a dumb, ignorant bullet I can just shoot at things. 

"Normal, my mother always said, is a setting on your dryer. Which is funny because I am 2.3 children all by myself. My mother is _extremely_ normal." Pretense is a vice, and one I abhor. My mother said this, I try to live it. 

The military guys (I assume, anyway — yup, 61.7% chance) are getting out of their vehicle. "Hess, Alcott. Welcome to the Emerald City." 

"What, no 'hands behind your head, do as we say or we'll kill you'? Surprisingly cordial," Sophia drawls.

"Well we're not that kind of operation. Not with valuable allies. I'm Major Johnson. Get in, I'll give you a tour and try to explain." He pats the seat next to him, and before I can react Sophia is grinning down at me from it.

"Shotgun!". 

I sigh. This is exasperating as all get out. "Fine." I join her in the jeep, sliding into the back seat. "No seatbelts here either." 

"Um, Major Johnson, there are brakes. Right?" Sophia grins. 

"Yes. I take it you guys have had quite the week." 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I sigh. 

"And in lieu of telling you how bad it's been I will just say I prefer to be called Taylor. Taylor Hebert, until recently a living student at Winslow High, Brockton Bay." 

"Uh _huh_." Johnson chuckles. "I was briefed, but it seems that the details are more interesting than I was led to believe."

The jeep is moving at a fair clip now. My vertigo has settled, and the light is normalizing to an appropriate range of color. Although there's a green cast to everything, still. "What exactly were you told?" 

"You kids ever heard of a Case 70?"

I nod silently, having Googled a bit on this when I first became aware of Sophia's situation. 

"Hm." Sophia is lost in thought for a second, then she continues. "Okay, so I remember from Wards training that this is when you have twins, right? They trigger, sometimes they're in physical proximity, sometimes not. Bam, one body, two...oh. Oh I see."

"And obviously you and Hess aren't twins. You share memories, if I'm understanding correctly, there's some sort of shift system for who's driving." 

"We never argue about that. Copacetic as ever." Taylor laughs ruefully, and it is Taylor. I can't hide from that. Not this time. 

"I imagine things have actually improved between you two since the uh, incident." Johnson is slowing the jeep now. 

"Yeah. I sort of get why she did what she did." 

Johnson nods, pulling to a stop in front of a Quonset hut. "And you? Have you obtained any insight into yourself?" 

Taylor mulls this over, biting her lip. "Not sure."

"All right. Well this here is your quarters. Let us know if it's not up to speed and we'll fix it. Someone will be along in an hour or two to get you guys fully briefed, and you'll look forward to meeting the Director in a day or two if her schedule permits."

"I kind of feel like we've been drafted." Sophia regards the room keenly.

"I don't. I think, Major Johnson, that you are trying to accomplish a specific goal which is impossible without our cooperation." 

He looks somewhat sheepish. "Our thinkers warned us you'd realize that. I didn't exactly try to conceal it, so when you break out please don't kill me with your mind."

"Death is too kind a punishment." I laugh. "Well thanks. We'll get settled. I look forward to this briefing, although perhaps I should think of it as a business proposal."

"I'll pass that on. Thank you for not freaking out." Johnson gives a loose mock salute with two fingers and the jeep drives off. 

Sophia looks at me, splaying herself out over the couch in an _extremely_ unladylike fashion. "Well, Dorothy, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." 

"It'll be alright, Toto. I'm already working on a plan." 

"I get to be fucking _Toto_." She shakes her head. "I can't with you, kid." 

*****

The woman sitting across from me is very beautiful. It isn't so much how she looks though. It's that she listens. She asks questions. She seems genuinely appreciative of me. And she's paying for my meal, always a plus. I told myself I'd never be willingly involved again after Annette died, but this is different. Somehow. Maybe it's a sign. I just wish Taylor would…

"So this girl might be a human master, she got your daughter, and then Dragon? Like fucking Dragon, the world's greatest tinker?" 

"Yup." I twirl a fry in the ketchup and pop it into my mouth. "Of course the little shit tells her I'm a parahuman, gives me a cape name and everything. Odysseus, like….it's kind of apropos, when you think about it." 

Tess nods. "I think she knew more than a master might. But I can see Dragon's side here too." 

"Well, yeah. It wasn't exactly a good look. She _said _she was a precognitive, some kind of percentage based question and answer system. But then she said she was a master, and my daughter just walked off with her like that…"

"Your daughter also has Sophia Hess's personality and memories. Shadow Stalker. So it's safe to say she's not in her right mind given her relationship to that individual, and that her new right mind will be different when she gets back to it." Tess plucks a pickle out of her burger, eats it with her fingers, and grins at me. "What are you looking at?" 

I laugh, genuinely. The first genuine humor I've felt that wasn't impelled by a nervous, angry fear in…in years, dammit. Years. "It's been a long time since I was around someone so genuine, so human, so energetic." 

She laughs in response. "Oh, I'm not like that at all. I'm actually being spoon fed exactly what I need to say at any given moment to put you completely at ease, and then I can move to the next step of my devious master plan."

I laugh again, even harder. "And what might that be?" 

"I want to get you in bed. So your place or mine, Tiger?" 

I feel a sudden sharp pang of sadness. "Yours. I can't do anything in Annette's bed yet. I'm sorry." 

She waves me off. "Oh I completely understand. I lost my parents when I was a kid. Not that it's even comparable, but it does things to your head and they last a while."

I nod. "You're so great. I've been…strangled for a while. Stagnating." 

"I know. Well Danny boy, we're gonna get you back on your feet. Let's get back to my bachelorette pad, shall we?" 

"Lead the way." The light at the end of the tunnel. Oh God I'm so happy. 

She pauses, looking around quizzically. "Huh. There's supposed to be a portal that opens up out of thin air and takes us right back to my place. But it's not happening." 

I study her expression for a minute before I burst out laughing. "Only in the movies, huh?" 

"Well I guess so. We have to walk, but it's a nice night out. Take my hand?" She offers me a perfectly manicured hand with slender fingers, _just_ enough calluses to make me think she's a bit more experienced than I imagined, and we're off to the setting sun. 

As we walk, I notice a girl with dusty blonde hair looking at me with…concern? Jealousy? Probably neither. She doesn't look more than sixteen. Maybe I'm just noticing people looking at me again and reading it how I used to, when I was dying too.

*****

"Shower works." I step out, toweling myself off, and look at Sophia, who is still scattered across the couch but has apparently found a large bag of barbecue kettle chips in some cupboard or other. 

She gives me a thumbs up. "Sophia loves these things. I'm half inclined to dial 0 there and see if I can get a pizza with extra anchovies."

"And Taylor?" 

"Near as I can tell they didn't know I was coming. Not a single thing in the pantry interests me _specifically_. It's good food though. What do you think?"

I consider for a moment, stepping back into the bathroom to dry my hair. When I poke my head out again I'm wearing a robe. "27.9% chance they thought a little harder about whatever they think is going on. But they clearly didn't." 

"Huh, so it works retroactively?" 

I look at her, puzzled. "Why wouldn't it?" 

Taylor sighs. "I can't even call you Little Miss Know-It-All. Because you're totally clueless about the most basic things."

"Like what?" I put my hands on my hips and glare at her. 

"People…expect powers to have clear limitations. And usually they do. Yours seems to be some bullshit and you don't even _realize_, like, it takes adult capes, good ones, _years _to put two and two together on the most basic practical applications sometimes. You really won the lottery." Taylor shakes her head. 

"I see." If this is true it's actually a terrible oversight on my part. She's right. What I know of people comes from observing my family and our associates — my mother and father, my uncle the mayor, my cousin Rory, and so forth — and from reading books. My Demon's arrival was the first time I felt like I wasn't…sheltered. And maybe I still am. 

But there's nowhere better to learn than the deep end of the frying pan. Except for what's probably coming next. 

And with that happy thought there is a knock at the door. I duck back into the bedroom and begin hurriedly dressing myself. The briefing will begin soon, and there is a 99.777789% chance that it will begin a new and exciting chapter of this ridiculous odyssey of mine. 

*****

As soon as the door closes it becomes clear to me, in a flash of energy and movement, that I am not being asked to choose between the lady and the tiger. I have gotten both. I'm on my back on the floor for the next hour, and it's obvious to me that we will never debate over who's in control here. She shows overt signs of being in direct control, but it's my show. And there are indeed fireworks. I'm in heaven. Maybe she can help me get my daughter back, even. But this is a wonderful start. 

We're in the shower, she's soaping my back, and my work cell rings. "Let them leave a voicemail, babe," she admonishes, gripping my shoulder firmly with a warm hand. 

"Oh, I was planning on it." I smile and lean back against her. Another ten minutes pass, and as I'm getting my jeans on I check the phone. It seems like whoever it was didn't leave one. The number is out of state, though, somewhere toward Massachusetts probably, judging by the area code. 

"Say." I look my Tess in the eye, placing my hands gently on her shoulders. "I was thinking I'd sleep here tonight, if it's not too much of a bother."

She smiles and shakes her head, making a "pfffftttttttt" noise. "A _bother_. He-Bear, you can be so _silly _sometimes. Of course you can." 

I grin. "So when's the wedding?" 

"I was thinking we'd elope. But that can be hashed out later. I got a surprise for you, come on."

"Oh boy." I grin, putting my phone on _vibrate_ as whoever it was sends me a text. 

*****

This is it. The big briefing. Most of the people here are not in uniform, I note. That seems important. A lot of suits, a few lab coats, and yeah, five or six uniforms. All Air Force blue. One or two are clearly big time brass, a general or a Flight Admiral or whatever it is. It blandly occurs to me that this is another oversight. And I cannot waste a question asking if they're called generals or not. I need my power ready and my mind sharp right now. There's a projector in the front of the room, and we are seated prominently. As if we are in fact guests. Although I immediately balance this by observing that we are on one side of the long table, and as such, flanked by trained adults, and the only door is across the table to the other side of the room. Hm. Interesting. Sophia has noticed this too, which is good. I don't exactly believe them when they say they have no intention of forcing us to do anything. After all, we're here, aren't we? 

"All right, everyone's here. I'm General Grissom, USAF liaison for the Emerald City Project. What is that, you ask?" He clicks his remote and an image appears, some kind of hypercube. "A better preliminary question is _where_. And the answer, as you may have guessed, is not in Kansas anymore. Certainly not _here_. No, we are no longer on Earth-Bravo. We are in a pocket dimension. One created in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains by…classified means. What that means to our guests at this point is that we _do_ know, but we ain't saying. This would account for the relative condition of the vehicles and buildings, as well as the age of any equipment you may have seen. The distance makes transporting large objects rather prohibitive."

He puts an old photo on the projector. If the timestamp wasn't enough, the color grade would have clued me in. The photo was taken _here, _in the Emerald City, in…1976. That can't be right. There's one structure, an RV similar to what the PRT might use for a mobile command post. 

"Yes. This dimension has been known to the United States government since 1973. You may have read some of the last writings of the astronaut Sphere, in which he credits the cancelation of Apollo 18, 19 and 20 with his…later mindset. It is precisely because of that later mindset —" he actually makes air quotes with his fingers — "that we didn't fucking tell him we needed the equipment, aside from the boosters, to explore up here. When it became clear that the suits were no longer necessary we moved the command post in, which you can see here."

I look at Sophia. She looks at me. We look at Johnson, who's standing at the head of the table by Grissom, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. 

"Now I know you have to be wondering. Do powers work differently here? The answer to that is no. Nor do we need help exploring. It's just literally a classified grab bag for all sorts of stuff. If we don't want the PRT or other aspects of the government to know about it, we bring it here. And yes, that means you. That means what you do here. That means if you tell anyone about this place or what you've been doing or discussing, if you breathe a _word_, we will find out, then we will find you, and then we will kill you. Deader than shit, as a matter of fact. This has been done before. Any questions or issues with that?"

"no sir." My voice is very small. I do not like being threatened. It scares me. I understand that he means well but he is coarse, and he is crude, and he is harsh, and I do not like him. 

"Not a one." Sophia crosses her arms. "So what are we doing here?" 

"Officially, you were being interrogated about the whole human master thing, the murder of Taylor Hebert, and other things you are free to make up as you see fit. Due to a clerical error, you were considered much more of a threat than was appropriate — although abusing the 911 system to claim to be a human master didn't help matters at all — and Dragon was dispatched to route you to an FBI parahuman interrogation facility designed for Master and Stranger response protocols, in Albuquerque, New Mexico."

"Got it. Totally happened." Sophia nods solemnly.

"World's greatest tinker. Girl scout. Definitely human." The last two words under my breath softly. They don't hear me, but I'm almost daring them to. 

"Unofficially, and in actual fact, we have never seen the fucking _like_ before. Johnson told you about Case 70s. He suggested we refer to you as a Case 69, Misses Hebert and Hess, but for several reasons this was flatly _denied_." Taylor laughs out loud. "Chief among them being that we do not use the PRT case classification rubric. In any event, you were declared a matter of national interest the moment our thinkers came back with Eggplant on the Shadow Stalker probation violation case opened April 11th of this year."

He clicks the remote again, and a very close range satellite photo of the Woman standing over Taylor's body appears. "When this individual killed Taylor Hebert, legally speaking, using the cover story that she was acting on behalf of the PRT, we decided to compartmentalize you away from their entire apparatus. They don't need to know, and God willing it will stay that way. You don't seem…dangerous, just extremely interesting. Now, it's clear that Miss Alcott there identified you as similarly interesting and important as well, so we decided to secure her cooperation. Additionally, it was suggested by our people that she would make a valuable asset in her own right."

He pauses and looks at each of us. "Any questions?" 

Sophia nods. "You said — with the Case 70s — two minds, one body. There are two powers as well. Do you think Taylor has any?" 

"Miss Hess, that's one of the things we're most interested in determining. Our working theory is that her 'power', as it were, was to initiate a one time body swap. That your direct, energetic physical contact with her was the cause of a trigger founded as much on empathy as on anger."

"That sounds right, actually. But you think I have another power, or that it's possible?" Taylor looks hopeful at this. I dearly hope she's considered that if they find this power they'll think of it as theirs…

"It's very possible. As we said your situation is similar to a known phenomenon in which two powers do occur. For example, Capricorn."

"Right. Water and rock depending on which person is 'driving'."

"Correct. Now it's been noted by our observation teams that you are capable of using Shadow Stalker's breaker state no matter which persona is dominant. This indicates that the other power, if it exists, would follow similar rules."

I choose this moment to speak up. "You're hoping she can merge again. With a third, then a fourth. Maybe more. The military applications are obvious." 

"Actually that's something of a nightmare scenario. It is entirely our hope that she does not have this power and that she does not discover it here. The implications for planetary security would be disastrous, as you can imagine." Hm. There's a 37% chance he's telling the entire truth. 99.2% that he is telling the truth about this not being a desired outcome. Good enough. 

"That will do. If Taylor _and_ Sophia consent to assist you then I do as well." 

"Speaking unilaterally, we're in." Taylor grins. "This is gonna be cool." 

"Good. I suspected you'd both approve of our plans. Now, our guys have developed a power testing regimen, which we can begin work on tomorrow afternoon. The Director wants to meet you both for lunch. I suggest you get back to quarters and get some sleep. Agreeable?"

I nod, standing. It's something I've seen my uncle do at meetings to indicate dominance. "No objection. Taylor?" 

"Can't wait. Let's rock and roll!" I'm happy for her. She's found a purpose for her power, a direction for herself. But I do fear it won't last, and I don't dare ask my Demon. 

I know exactly what he will say. 

*****

I wake up, and Tess is gone. She's left a note telling me she'll be back later. Apparently a work emergency? I don't even know what she does. I don't care though. The future's so bright I gotta wear shades, and she's part of it. 

I finally decide to check that text. It reads as follows:

_ **I was with your daughter after she triggered. I talked her out of suicide. I held her hand when she died for another person. I know you are like her. So I know you need purpose too. Real purpose, not the feeling of it. To be empowered, not used. ** _

_ **I have lied to many people. I tell you this so that you know what is at stake when I tell you I will never lie to you. Or to her. Or to S. Tess is not your friend. Call me. ** _

_ **SL** _

I stare at the text, working my jaw, then turn off my phone and head back home for the day. I don't know what to make of this and I don't like it. But she's right. We're moving too fast. That doesn't mean I can text and drive. 


	5. Director

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh fugg :D :D :D

[_Behold, I have told you before.  
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.  
Matthew 24:25-26_](https://youtu.be/pLxJuN774fA)  
  
Sunlight broke into dreams, and I awoke. We. Somebody did. Her name was Sophia and her name was Taylor and…anyway I awoke. I just had a longer mental morning routine now. The light was still green and I was still kinda dizzy, but luckily I figured I'd be out of here in a couple of days. That was consistent with their story. And we were going to meet the Director today. That was…I didn't know what it was. Ominous, maybe. Intimidating. What would the director of such a powerful organization be like? Were these people really the government? Or were they some kind of "deep state" plotting and planning against the values of ordinary citizens?  
  
They didn't seem to trust the PRT, which probably meant they didn't answer to the Department of Parahuman Affairs. Secretary Lee was known for his somewhat utopian views on capes and their potential…there were rumblings about that. If I believed capes were…bad, I'd want to be involved with Emerald City. But if I believed they were normal people, good or bad by turns, I might too. I was normal people still, I thought. Hoped.  
  
Or maybe worse, they were powerful capes with a tinker and some military surplus gear and…Dragon. Scratch that. We'd been placed here as a result of a legal process I didn't fully understand yet. They were with the government.  
  
Which was of course great. I'd been educated by the government. The government had stood by while I got shoved in a locker. The government had told my father to let it go, that it wasn't worth his time or their money. The government had…let me get away with that, actually. With doing that to myself. The government had also reined in my vigilante tendencies and kept me, admittedly, from getting worse. The government had, since the founding of the United States, conspired for nearly -- no, the whole thing, its _entire _history to justify my vision of myself as an angry, street smart bitch who didn't trust anyone, even my own mother…  
  
My relationship with the government was really not something I could describe as complicated. After all, I was still wearing Mom's "fuck the police" T-shirt. I'd been raised a certain way and that wasn't changing based on any experience I'd had in the last few years.  
  
"Dinah, wake up." I shook the sleeping kid. It had to be nearly ten out here. I wasn't sure how I knew that, as sunlight worked differently and we had no clocks…but it was time to move.  
  
"Bwuh…? Mom, five more minutes…"  
  
I sighed. "Dinah. You putz. I'm not your mom, I'm Taylor Hebert. We're in a pocket dimension run by the actual Men In Black, because your shenanigans got us kidnapped by a robot. Unfortunately childhood is going to have to wait. You do not have five more minutes. I am sorry. But it's time to wake up!"  
  
Dinah sat bolt upright. "Ah. Yes. Of course. You're right. Do you know…every night before I go to sleep I ask my Demon what the chances of all of this being a bad dream are. He always tells me the same thing."  
  
"Zero, huh? I feel you though. This isn't very fun sometimes." I hugged Dinah. She hugged me back, and a small wet spot was developing on my shirt, when the phone rang.  
  
I shadow formed across the room quickly and picked it up. "Hello, Hess residence, Taylor speaking. May I ask who is calling?"  
  
"Funny." Johnson sounded energetic this morning. "The Director wants to meet you personally. Make sure Taylor is driving, she's in the big dome across from you guys."  
  
"Copy that. Now?"  
  
"She wanted to push for yesterday but our thinkers came back with the thinking emoji."  
  
"Emoji based thinker powers, huh." Something occurred to me. "So Eggplant yesterday meant…"  
  
"Yeah, he's a pervert. Basically it meant he had a mind uh," Johnson trailed off.  
  
I nod. "Boner. I'm pretty sure that's the interpretation we're both going to stick with."  
  
"Indeed. Poop does good work though."  
  
"Is that…is that his cape name? Are you serious?!"  
  
"I told you. He's an irreverent pervert. Best in his field. Kicks my ass at beer pong too. Anyway, chop chop."  
  
"Right. Talk to you soon, I guess." I hung up. Dinah was looking at me.  
  
"Do I want to know?"  
  
"No. No you do not. I've been summoned to meet personally with the Director. Just hold down the fort, okay?"  
  
Dinah sniffled. "Okay. I'll get some breakfast I guess."  
  
"Atta girl." I snapped her a mock salute, Johnson style, and shadow formed through the corrugated tin wall of our Quonset hut, doing a reverse moonwalk. From there it was a short morning run, past what appeared to be an airfield. I didn't know where they had a need to fly to — maybe the C130 there was for transport between Albuquerque and the Emerald City? I was fairly sure the Director would fill me in.  
  
I came up to the dome and found a security checkpoint. I presented my right iris and waited, as the laser gave me a once-over. "Hess, Sophia, authorized," a computer voice said. "The Director will see you now."  
  
A metal door…uh, dilated, actually, and I found myself face to face with  
  
"Mom?!" I squeaked, tumbling backward in shock. "But you're…you're…"  
  
"It's good to see you too, little owl." She wrapped me in a warm embrace and I was sure beyond a Shadow — this was Mom. "I had to fake my death when I got transferred here. Been working undercover since before I met your Dad. I haven't had time to explain it to him yet, and I'm not sure anything I can say will be good enough. But when I heard about your trigger I wanted you here personally. Maybe I can help."  
  
I looked at her, eyes shining with the light of hope. "But this isn't my body. And it's not only my memories. Are you sure…"  
  
She stepped back and looked me over. "That _is_ my shirt. So you had to have gotten it from Danny. If he says you're my daughter, and you say you're my daughter —"  
  
I nodded.  
  
"Then you're my Taylor. And I've missed you so much. Come on in, let's talk. We have a lot to catch up on."  
  
I followed her in and sat down. "Do we _ever_."  
  
"You go first." Mom grinned. Big Owl was back, oh God…  
  
"Okay, well, Emma turned on me shortly after you died. Made fun of me for grieving. That's apparently because she met...well, Sophia here. Who is not always the most constructive influence."  
  
"Okay…" The door dilated behind me and there was a faint click. "Honey I'm not sure I remember an Emma. Can you fill me in?"  
  
I stared at Mom, my jaw hanging open. "How can you not remember Emma? She was my best friend! For years!"  
  
Mom sighs. "My death was faked. The car accident was not. I had a concussion and after the concussion they were filling my head full of mission critical things. I'm sorry."  
  
I gasp. "Oh Mom, that's terrible!"  
  
She nods. "Go on."  
  
I do. But now I'm suspicious. This has gone from too weird to be true to too good to be true very, very quickly. As I recount the story of the last two years, I watch her face closely for any reaction…  
  
_ELOHIM: Jehovah, Michael, see--yonder is matter unorganized. Go ye down and organize it into a world like unto the worlds that we have heretofore formed. Call your labors the first day, and bring me word.  
  
JEHOVAH: It shall be done, Elohim. Come, Michael, let us go down.  
  
MICHAEL: We will go down, Jehovah.  
  
JEHOVAH: Michael, see--here is matter unorganized. We will organize it into a world like unto the worlds that we have heretofore formed. We will call our labors the first day, and return and report.  
  
MICHAEL: We will return and report our labors of the first day, Jehovah.  
  
JEHOVAH: Elohim, we have been down as thou hast commanded, and have organized a world like unto the worlds that we have heretofore formed; and we have called our labors the first  
  
day.  
  
ELOHIM: It is well.  
  
And I saw a vision, of heaven opened, and the spirit moving upon the face of the deep…and two beasts beckoned to me…  
  
COME AND SEE_  
  
"And anyway, that's what happened. Gee, just talking about it has me PTSDing a bit. I can't breathe so good."  
  
"Oh honey." She produces a thermos and pours me a cup of…is that tea? Best mom!  
  
"Aw thanks. You're still definitely mom."  
  
"I've always done my best. I don't intend to stop."  
  
I nod.  
  
"So tell me about the cape stuff, after you woke up in…Sophia's body."  
  
"Right, where the hell do I even begin with that?"  
  
"At the beginning?"  
  
I sing. "The very best place to start…"  
  
_She isn't your mother. Well, she is. But in a similar way to how you're Sophia. She's trying, though._  
  
My head hurts and I am now in a full blown panic. The room seems smaller than it ever has. "Mom I am very much not okay. Hold on a second."  
  
I stand. Then I proceed to throw up all over the floor. Then I'm not standing, dropping to my hands and knees. "I saw something a minute ago, something horrific, like a hallucination…and now I'm just all kinds of fucked up. I need to lie down."  
  
I look at her, studying her reaction as I pant. Is that a small smile? It can't be. And just as quickly it's gone, replaced by a look of infinite concern…  
  
"Oh honey. Yeah, we can wait until later. There's plenty of time. Let me call Johnson to get you back to quarters in his jeep."  
  
"Right. Thanks a bunch, mom. I'm so glad to see you again…I love you."  
  
"I love you too, darlin'. Always have and always will."  
  
She presses a button, and I sit and just…watch her, lovingly. Trying to _believe_. But I think I've got another power somehow, and I don't like the first thing it told me. Or, knowing what I know about triggers, why I must have triggered. This isn't mom it can't be mom I _need _it to be mom…  
  
As the door dilates open in front of me and I walk numbly to Johnson's jeep, I finally understand how Dinah felt. There's a light rain, and mist covers everything. But that's not why my cheeks are wet.  
  
*****  
  
"Charlie here. Prime has second triggered. She knows."  
  
"Copy that." A male voice came over the other side of the intercom. "I'll watch Secondary carefully for any duplication of the effect."  
  
"I don't expect it, Thomas. But your methods always manage to surprise me."  
  
"I know. You're not doing too badly yourself."  
  
"I better not be. There will be a literal devil to pay if this doesn't go our way."  
  
"I know. But the people who run the Garden…they're no one's friends. Not His and not ours."  
  
"You got that right. Just remember, you snake, I'm only in this at all for my daughter. Charlie out."  
  
*****  
  
I lay down on the bed, shaking. Dinah puts a damp washcloth on my forehead. "You said you saw a vision, and then you felt like she wasn't your mother?"  
  
I sigh, exasperated. "She _is _my mother. She's just not, too. I don't know how to explain it. I don't understand it. But I think I second triggered."  
  
Dinah considers this. "So your mother is not your mother, and also the Director of this facility, and as a result of meeting her you second triggered."  
  
"That's about the size of it. I guess, anyway."  
  
Dinah sucks the end of her finger for a second. "So. Do you think they were trying to induce a trigger event?"  
  
I think back to how claustrophobic I felt. How the door clicked shut behind me — as soon as I mentioned Emma. "Yeah. Come to think of it I do."  
  
"So do we tell them about your new power?"  
  
A creative dodge occurs to me, and I'm _so_ grateful I don't have to answer this right away. "We can't. We don't even know what it is."  
  
"Ah. That makes sense. So we should test it."  
  
"How?" I study her carefully, breathing and trying to clear my mind.  
  
_Is not nearly as confident as she appears. Not that you didn't already know this. What you didn't know is that she has long term designs, which despite her budding friendship with you she would gladly sacrifice you to accomplish._  
  
"So you have some kind of long term plan, I guess it's telling me."  
  
Dinah purses her lips and looks at me strangely. "I assume that's not the only thing it told you. But yes, we would test it like that."  
  
"It's going to make me paranoid if it keeps up. Does it just tell me everyone's secrets or what?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
We sit in silence for a couple seconds, and then the phone rings. "I'll get it," I say.  
  
On the other end, Johnson is breathless. "I heard there was an…incident during your meeting with the director. Are you all right? You seemed off when I picked you up. I'm worried."  
  
I consider for a moment. Is he trying to pump me for information? "No, I'm really not okay. Maybe the tea, maybe the air up here doesn't agree with me. I don't know."  
  
I close my eyes and breathe deeply, and…  
  
  
  
"Johnson. If you know something I need to know you need to tell me. Like, for example, how to play beer pong. And what kind of _Weird Ass WHITE BOY _picks POOP for a fucking cape name!"  
  
Johnson laughs. "Uh huh. So you did second trigger. I had one hundred percent, OK sign on that. Yeah, let's hang out this afternoon and I'll explain some things. But first let me ask you something. Do you trust the Director?"  
  
I really have to think this one over for a bit. "I want to. I want to try, or to learn how, or something, I don't know. She's not my mom, no matter what she says. But maybe she wants to be?"  
  
_The stories we tell ourselves can in fact become who we are._  
  
Huh. My power's voice sounds kinda familiar. I wonder why I didn't notice that before.  
  
"You and me both, kid. So we'll talk off the record, under the rose. Soon." The great thinker Poop hangs up the phone and I find myself laughing uproariously at the fucking absurdity of…of everything, really.  
  
*****  
  
I'm off work today, so I putter around the empty Hebert house. Annette isn't here, of course, and neither is Taylor. Neither is Tess, for that matter. Which bothers me, but not nearly as much as the text from this …"SL" person. Sophia and Taylor didn't mention an SL. But that's understandable. We didn't have time, and I didn't think of them both as…my daughters yet. I didn't trust them, and it's not as if Taylor ever really trusted me, not since her mother died.  
  
I'm debating what to do, really. I could text this person back and demand a meeting, call them. I could go to the cops, although I'm not sure what for at this point. If anything I'm wanted more than "SL" or Tess must be. Although Tess is probably right, Dragon was just blowing smoke to get me to walk away in a huff. From my own daughter. I shouldn't have done that. SL sure didn't.  
  
There's a knock at the door. I open it, cautiously, and peek out. On my porch stands a stocky girl with reddish blonde hair, holding an excited, squirming puppy. "Hello, can I help you?"  
  
She glares at me. "Friend said to give this to you. Made me. Said you needed something positive to do, make you feel better or some bullshit like that. Purpose." She was enraged, although I couldn't tell if it was at me or at this friend, or if she was just…always like that.  
  
"I see. I got a text like that last night."  
  
"Same friend. His name's Orion. I'll be watching. Harm comes to him, or you don't walk him, I will fucking kill you, understand me Mr Hebert?"  
  
I cock my head to the right quizzically. Strangely enough this seems to calm her down a bit. "All right, I guess."  
  
"Good. Hate talking. She wanted me to be a good example. She'll call you. Bye." She shoves the puppy into my arms, and just like that, she's gone.  
  
I look down at the little lad. He appears to be a very large husky. Maybe even a wolf hybrid, judging by his large forepaws. I can only imagine what kind of creature he'll grow into. With my love and care, of course.  
  
I pet him on the top of his head, and he yips appreciatively. We go inside and I sit on the couch…waiting for a phone call that will probably change my life, at this rate.  
  
*****  
  
I whip out my phone and text my field agent.  
  
**TT 06/05/2011 1227  
  
You're actually in the house, right?**  
  
**06/05/2011 1230  
  
Of course I am. Lol.**  
  
She attaches a picture. Danny, on the couch. She's sitting down, and in the near field of view I can see a bag of chips. I really hope _he_ can't. But my latest intervention is otherwise going well. He's petting Orion, not doing anything stupid. Not yet. I just have to call him before this "Tess" bitch does.  
  
If anyone asks, my power made me do this. I just hope Taylor's okay.  
  
*****  
  
The woman closes the connection. All I did was promise her she could see her daughter again, and she…well, it's obvious that she doesn't trust me. She's using me. But she has allowed a great deal of her plans to depend on me. And those of her master, whose claims I do not believe at all.  
  
But the upshot is this: the Emerald City Project has an inside man in the PRT. And Cauldron has a rogue agent who will not be handing over his third favor. And I have…well.  
  
I walk into the small cell where Mr Pitter is keeping Secondary in a state of, shall we say, affable compliance. "Hello, pet."  
  
There's an angry thrum as hundreds of flies fall away from her face and spread out like a black halo around her head. Dark hair falls to her shoulders. Her glasses are clean. Her face is a sullen line.  
  
She's definitely the offspring of the woman I know only as Charlie. And I don't know why she's interesting to anyone else…all I know is that Secondary is very interesting to us, and that she's mine. Anyone who finds her interesting will have to earn my favor before they are permitted anything to do with her.  
  
That includes "Charlie." This world is mine. It has no room for interlopers.


	6. Defiler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your mother eats worms in hell. Also, Dinah narrates. Is that pea soup I smell cooking?

_And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days._

_And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,_

_And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven._

_And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him._

_Revelation 12:6-9_

I sit with my “work” phone, staring at it. The attention I'm putting into it diverts my mind, clears it. I find myself distracted _from having been distracted_, and it is thus that I wonder. This woman was easy to be happy around. But I didn't feel hope because of her. I felt hope because of me. I understand that now, not that I…didn't before, but. It's clearer now. 

Does that mean I felt happiness because of her? Orion yips, cocking his head, and I realize I said that out loud. Damn, Daniel. Where did you find this…morose bullshit? "I suppose it doesn't, does it, boy?" 

I'm still staring. Waiting for a sixteen year old girl to call me. It's as pathetic as it is lewd. The TV is blaring away, something about Deputy Director Calvert and his announcement of an upcoming collaboration with…wait a minute. 

"The Albuquerque Parahuman Response Team regional office has been notified by the United States Air Force that two young capes will be reassigned to their Wards program from Air Force custody within the next two weeks. For several reasons, we in Brockton Bay are collaborating with this new effort, and we hope to be able to share more details with you in time."

I already know more than I wish I did. I text the number, no longer waiting for her to call. 

_Are you seeing this _

I wait with bated breath. _Yipes. _

_Yeah, that about covers it. So you know then. _

Tapping my foot anxiously. _No, but I suspected. This is bad. I'm canceling our call tonight. Call Tess. Tell me how it goes. _

Huh. Now Tess is…no, she didn't say trustworthy. She just said to…to reach out and talk to someone instead of waiting for them to tell me what's wrong God dammit Hebert why do you do this to yourself? Always the same story, with me. 

I dial. There's a series of rings, endless, as if echoing from within the heart of the universe to resound across it…

*****

"Secondary, your old enemy is about to return. I need to be sure you're ready."

The sudden onslaught of a constellation of burning needles tells me she's ready. Also that we have way more hornets around here than I thought we did. The timeline closes and I address this with Mr Pitter. 

*****

"Major Johnson."

"Yes ma'am!" 

She glares at me with an intensity of command that I have never found anything but intimidating. The director means business. Always. She's found her purpose in life, and it turns me on. A lot. 

"Bring The Dreamer to me. It's time to take her down the rabbit hole."

I nod. A little early for that, especially as it's kind of a big card to play, but I do what I'm told. I salute, turn on a heel and walk out. As the door dilates, I pull out my cell and call their room. 

"Hey, Sophia here. What's good?" 

Good. The kid doesn't answer the phone. That would be harder if I had to address her directly. "I need to take Dinah for some basic power testing. Can you have her get dressed quick?" 

"Um, it's midnight." 

"I know, Sophia. Please?" 

She hesitates. "Listen, if He..Taylor's mom is in on this I guess it'll be okay. All right, I'll tell her."

This is not the first time I've hoped for the sake of "Colonel Annette Hebert" that she actually wants the best for all three of these girls. Because that is exactly the reaction she predicted. But I'm glad there's less friction. 

***** 

The exact moment I've been waiting for has arrived. I feared it when I first became aware of its grim inevitability. Then I loathed it. Then I accepted it. And so forth. I grieve for a childhood I am denied. 

But as I pull on a yellow sundress, I feel like a brave warrior girding myself for a final battle. Maybe it's a mere story. But it's a story I tell myself, one I intend to become. Because if I don't, only my Demon will return tonight. 

Dear reader, do you feel sympathy for me? Do you perhaps begin to piece together what I have, to understand my doom? I have been rescued from a man who fancies himself Beowulf by a chimeric Grendel, only to find that Grendel's mother was pulling the strings the whole time. 

Or do these comparisons make little sense to you? Is the wide divergence from what you're familiar with misleading you? Guiding you into speculation that sheds little light on things as they truly are? 

Either way, it's for the best. If thunder did not exist, men would have little fear of lightning. 

As I tuck a quiet fury away, concealing it like a dagger, I beg of you, dear reader. If you believe in innocence, in hope, in truth, in anything more than dragons…

Clap your hands. If you don't, then feel free to tab away and find an anime altpower, something more suitable to your fancy. Perhaps the intentional inscrutability of a world where I am dead and my memory is carried only by the wind will suit you better. 

But if you do, hold onto your butt. This is about to get real ugly real fast. 

*****

I steeple my fingers, glaring at the dilating door over the rim of my glasses. I'm fully aware that I am posing like an anime supervillain. But then, that's the entire idea. To act a part, to enable…well. There are people out there worse than Annette Hebert. And this world is poorer for having been denied her for so long. 

If this works...if it just works even a little…we can catch lightning in a bottle, trap the demon in the triangle, and I can leave. At what cost? None the subject herself hasn't already accepted as a necessary cost of her own endeavors. 

There are worse villains than me out there. And I'll be goddamned if I let them have this world. Well. I'll be goddamned either way. But at least I'll get to see Danny again. I can finally leave. 

I lost him because of the accident. And I've never truly forgiven myself. I've always wondered how Taylor had fared since. Hoping it hadn't been too hard for her. I would be avenging _my_ Taylor with hellfire if a tenth of what's happened to this…strange hybrid had happened to my girl. If her friend Zoe-Anne ever did _anything _like that to her…

Christ on a bike. Lustrum would be screaming at me to stop before I lost myself. And I'd laugh, and I'd look at her, and I'd look back at the pretty waif who thought her contempt for others was righteous beauty and truth, and…

My pencil breaks. I look down and see what I've drawn. It's the subject, clearly. Her yellow sundress now golden armor, a sword in her hand, a helm on her brow…a snake underfoot and an apple in her hand. 

Well. That's good then. When I sat down to draw my daughter and this…other girl came out, anger _etched_ into her face, it was harder to tell that I would succeed. 

Alan Moore has nothing on me. 

Before me the door dilates. Soft, dainty footsteps. Then it dilates again. I finish folding the test slide I've created of the subject and put it in a pocket, then look up. Her hands are folded primly behind her back. Her posture is submission. But her actual _stance_ is a warning, her body taut like a live wire and ready to spring. To respond, I suppose, to threats or ploys even I cannot predict. Good. She'll survive. 

"He's ready to see me, then." 

"Who's ready to see you, honey?" Concerning. _He_ will not be pleased with this level of foreknowledge. He should have thought of that before he tried to carjack someone. 

"Your master. My Demon." 

I nod. There's no use lying to her, no use pretending. He needs this piece back, but it doesn't mean He doesn't know what's going on. So I must not…openly conspire. 

I reach a hand under the table and type on a hidden keyboard. 

JOHNSON. HAVE KIRTLAND READY TO EXECUTE CONTINGENCY NIMUE THE MOMENT TRANSPONDER STOPS. 

It's one way. The thing I've passed off as a pacemaker with those not in the know better keep ticking. He can respond when we're out of this. When I have my daughter back.

"You have something that belongs to him." I sigh. "I don't like that, but it's how it has to be."

She smiles. "That's not what you drew."

Mhm. So this is how she's going to play it. "You don't understand the limitations most of us deal with. I don't know if I drew that because it's what happens or because I want it to. You don't have that problem?" 

"That sounds like a nice problem to have. Are you sure this is worth trading Taylor for?" 

Hm. She's spent a lot of effort on this. I know the questions tax her. I don't think He knows how prepared she is to meet him. "I don't intend to trade Taylor to Him. If He asks, it's a done deal, of course. But I'm hoping it never comes to that. When the path is clear and the door opens, I want to be her mother again." 

"Oh. You'll trade me. I see, then. But you know, in no reality does Taylor accept you back if you give me to him." 

I nod. "And in no reality can she _have _me back if I don't. So it's about what I want, since nothing else is within my control."

"I see. You know, I think we both know how this ends, Annette. So let's get it over with." 

Well then. "All right. In a moment a door will open behind my desk. It'll be translucent, somewhat black against the general green haze. Please step through it."

She eyes me up, more a pit fighter than an eleven year old girl. "And what if I don't?" 

"I can't make you. But Dinah, darling. Have you ever seen a world in which you don't?" 

She shakes her head grimly. "No. No I have not."

With a wet slurping sound like a knife being pulled out of a wound, the door opens. For a moment I ponder staring into the face of God and walking backwards into hell, but there would be no use. Nothing is worse than futile nobility. It's the one thing I don't miss about Danny. 

**** 

Curiouser and curiouser. Faster and faster I lose control, staring past the event horizon into the furthest center of the pocket dimension. Power calls to power. And I know that once I cross that threshold, in some way, I will never return. It's lucky then, that I get to pick exactly which way that is.

A memory calls to me. "An eye, an ear, or your nose. But choose."

I search for a world in which I outwit my Demon completely, but I come up blind. 

Ten seconds later, I am the first human being to cross the event horizon of a black hole. And this is because the Ninth Circle is reserved for traitors. 

WELCOME TO MY DOMAIN, YOUNGLING.

The voice resounds. I wish I could tell you, dear reader, that it came from the walls, or that it came from nowhere. The truth, as unpalatable as it is, is that it _came from everywhere_. But most of all it came from my own heart. I was inside an event horizon as physical as it was moral. But aren't those merely two expressions of one Law? 

And with that thought, I found my strength laid bare for the hideous face it was. A face I didn't have, a knife I yet held. But I was killing no cowardly lion today. I was going to destroy the soul of an innocent little girl, and her Shadow too.

In no other reality did the Garden and the Fruit within not fall to the Snake. 

Time seems to start again, and I smile coyly. "Hello, Abaddon. Have you made my pea soup yet?" 

*****

"Danny? It's so great to hear from you!" 

I almost spit. This is how she's going to play it? "Tess, I think you know more about my daughter than you're saying."

"I don't want to hurt her, all right. There's a lot going on."

I take this in. "Are your feelings for me genuine? And is Tattletale using me?" 

She pauses, stammers. "I don't know. That's my answer to both."

"All right then. Help me. Please, Tess. You saw the announcement, they're in fucking custody or something. They're not coming back. Not without…"

There's a woman speaking in the background. She sounds upset. A male voice as well. Softer, resigned, as if he's used to this. I think I can make out him saying the word "Hero". Tess speaks again. "Hold that thought, Danny. Door, Danny Hebert's living room." 

I gape in an uneven admixture of shock and awe as a shimmering white light fades, revealing white halls with steel accents. And her. Jumping off these halls seamlessly into my living room, embracing me, planting a kiss on my lips…

I push away just in time to scream out "ORION, SIT!" Luckily, it seems he's been taught basic commands, and he doesn't disappear into a pocket universe never to be seen again. Or something. Then I kiss her back. I want to make love with her, not question if it's genuine. She seems to too. That's what Annette and I did, we built it. The hard way. 

She laughs. "So you see, I wasn't lying." 

I consider this. "So being fed every word you needed to say to make me...believe?" 

She looks distant and sad. "There's not a lot of time to have that conversation right now, Danny. Come on."

She grabs my hand, and says, 

"Door. Situation room, ECP Liaison, Kirtland AFB." Then I see her other hand reach into her pocket and pull out a pistol. My jaw drops, and I'm half a world away in a second. 

  
  
  



	7. Deceiver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The devil is a very, very stupid man. Dinah is a Yankee after Twain's own heart. So it goes.

You are Shadow Stalker's barely subdued anger, leaping across the conference table of situation room B and leveling your crossbow at USAF Major Johnson, aka "Poop". "What are they doing with her? It ain't no fucking power testing. And that's not…that's not…she won't even let me say it!" 

Johnson spreads his hands at you in a conciliatory gesture. This wasn't his idea, he's not a fan. The story he tells himself threatens to wash away who he is forever, though, and you think to yourself that you have such a _nice, neat _little period loaded into the crossbow. "Who won't let you say…who won't let you speak, Sophia?" 

You shake your head. You are Shadow Stalker's learned patience. You are Shadow Stalker's conviction that there is a rational solution, learned from her mother and nearly lost in suffering. Suffering you caused. You almost choke on the words. "It ain't like that, not really. We have an understanding, Taylor and I. The sum total of that understanding is this: you do not want her speaking right now. You do not want her driving." 

You cock the crossbow and level it at Johnson's head. "I will repeat, succinctly. What is actually going on in there?" 

*****

You are Shadow Stalker's belief that all of this can be talked out. You are Shadow Stalker's late night tuck-in, Shadow Stalker's bedtime story. Shadow Stalker's conviction that things will be okay. You are Shadow Stalker's primary tormentor, you tell yourself, you worry. You've worried for years. The "vortificer" allowed you to choose a time within two years in either direction from your present. You could have gone back to the day of, buried Annette (or even sent her back through to Gimel, or Charlie, or whatever it's being called. Here they call it Lamed or something silly), and driven home. Everything would still be fine. But in a way it's cowardice that chose early April of 2011 for you. This isn't "Taylor", it's not even "Sophia". She's never met Zoe-Anne, she only knows this horrid Emma creature. It's…Shadow Stalker, right? It's an easy choice. Stay detached, take over the multiverse, don't harm your daughter by attaching too quickly…oh hahahahahahaha fuck it, fucking cripes. Wow. That lasted until you met her. 

You are Annette Hebert. You are from another Earth. You are, like it or not, Shadow Stalker's mother. And you're wondering. Can this be talked out? Will Contingency Nimue take you and her in the same fire? What's going on inside the black hole? Has He won? That's why you're here, isn't it? Isn't it…???

Your intercom beeps. It's Johnson. You don't even need to hear what he has to say. "Read her in. I can't even face her right now so it's your job." 

"She can hear you, ma'am."

"I know. Hebert out."

*****

You are Shadow Stalker's tormentor. Her manipulator. You got her into this mess. As you look around you and see only spaceless, timeless, soulless, _utterly contentless _Darkness you begin for the first time to doubt your ability to get her back out. You reach out a hand and you marvel at how unlike the fabric of her cloak this is. How thick, how suffocating, how oppressive. You've never felt a chance this low. Not this close. Not with your hands. You breathe in heat death, and sniff at Higgs field disintegration. You lick moral nihilism off your lips, marveling at how it's blended with a tang of grief. You try to believe, if for now, only in this. 

"You did." You gasp in genuine childlike surprise. "You made my pea soup! It's quite something." 

YOU KNOW THIS IS ALL YOU. 

"Oh really. Then what do I need you for?" 

YOU WISH NO LONGER ONLY TO NARRATE. YOU WOULD ALSO WRITE AS WELL, YES? 

"But it might still feel like this. All the time." Although here you can touch it. Feel it. Smell it. It's like that day so long ago under the blankets when you knew that there were only two ways this could go. The demon could have you, or you could have a demon. 

Meeting Shadow Stalker put a stop to that. A person who was two people at once. It was beautiful and terrible, and what was terrible about it was that their love and sympathy for each other gave you hope. 

I THINK YOU DOUBT THAT. 

"I'm thinking about what kind of story the person I want to be would live in. I do admire your handiwork though, I really don't mean to sell you short. The fact that you made it this visible, this tangible…is it like this for you all the time as well?" 

And that's when you know you have the bastard in the triangle. Because there is, for now, no reply. 

***** 

You doodle absently as you listen to Johnson briefing Shadow Stalker in the next room. He explains the vortificer, Earth-C, the divergent schema from the Haywire Protocol ("not to confuse you. Point is she's from a third earth."), and the…collaboration. How you aren't about whatever it is Cauldron is doing because Cauldron cares as little about Charlie as it does about her Earth as it does about Shadow Stalker. How you have a third option. A third suggestion. How that's been…less appealing lately. Since what your guys are calling "The hypostasis of Sophia."

"And this third option, it's got something to do with Dinah?" The crossbow looks like it almost went off, there. You'd better intervene. 

You press a button and the intercom beeps. "Send Taylor in, please." 

*****

You are Shadow Stalker's smirking…no. You mustn't think of that. Yes, you're the part of herself she let get worse until it snapped, the part she ignored until it emerged from a locker and beat her senseless. You're the part of her that's been ignored since the car accident. The part of this synthesis she's almost too happy to let fester until it forces her to take what she wants. But you are also Shadow Stalker's _to_ escalation, the kindness, the love, the gift of a soul that gave her who she is now, kept her from killing herself that night back home. You are Shadow Stalker's only friend. You are her purpose. You are Shadow Stalker's atonement. And it is for this reason rather than any actual attachment to "Annette Hebert" that you aren't killing your mother right now. Or a person who thinks she's your mother, anyway. Wants to be? You've honestly such little time for her rationalizations, with all that's on the line. 

"You know what you're actually doing, letting me near you. Don't you? You're risking a lot."

"Taylor, I know that. That's why I asked for you specifically. When you hear what's going on, if you want to…whatever you want to do I'm okay with it." 

A voice in the back of your head tells you to let her tell the story as she wants it to be, not as it is. She'll nerd your help with that. This means you need only two words to be Shadow Stalker's right course. "Okay, mom."

You swallow. "What's really happening to Dinah? And to me. The truth this time, please." 

She…Mom…nods. Sighs. Thinks for a long moment. "My world is ruled by the Devil," she begins. And your jaw drops. 

*****

In an ideal world you wouldn't be Shadow Stalker's nurturing protector, her ardent listener. Her father. You'd be Taylor's. Taylor's and only Taylor's. 

In this world you don't have Tess. Not that that's a bad thing. Given that you'd presumably have Annette, and after all, Tess doesn't truly love you, she's simply a…what the fuck did she say? A Turing Machine on which these "entities" are computing the Last Question? You've read the story, of course. But when she tells you, as you stride purposefully through the halls of Kirtland Air Force Base listening to her mad tale about life, the universe and everything, and you hear her next words, it takes on new meaning. 

"So every day I would go to bed, right? Every day since…fuck, I must have been her age when Doctor…when _M_om read me the story for the first time. Fourteen, let's say. It was my purpose, she said. A Bible of sorts. And I would spit the toothpaste so that it ricocheted off the sink. And I would look at the mirror and say,"

You find yourself nerding out in unison with her. "INSUFFICIENT DATA TO PROVIDE A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." 

She beams at you and you think that maybe everything will be all right. "Yeah! So then I found myself standing over her that evening, and I said, maybe this is it. Maybe now we can provide some kind of…maybe she's a meaningful answer."

"My daughter. Shadow Stalker. A meaningful answer to entropy. So wait, she's a messiah figure or something?" 

"Not exactly. She allows us to approach the problem obliquely. We can make it about one thing instead of a much larger set of things. There are two consciousnesses in there as the result of one trigger event. There's…an impossible amount of soul running on the standard amount of brain."

"But the Butcher. Just as an example. We already have things like this. They're commonplace now, aren't they?" 

Tess shakes her head. "Simulations. In many cases not even a whole consciousness. The only one who even begins to get this close is Glaistig Uaine, and those aren't real people. They're shades. Your daughter is really both. It's amazing. It's wonderful. We've never seen anything like it."

You go over the lectures you've been cramming for an hour of walk and talk and Tom Clancy. It's starting to make sense, but maybe you're just slow. Maybe you've come to the wrong conclusion. Or to the one she wants you to come to. "So since it's not a simulation, or an alternate pocket universe being used to store endless computing power, but it's really two minds in one brain, something has violated entropy." 

She nods. "Exactly. Now, this is what my power is actually supposed to do, is find an answer to the last question. End a hundred meaningless cycles of violence. That's between me and Mom only. The other people we work with don't know. Alexandria, even Hero when he was alive, thought it was about killing God."

"God. Aren't these kind of the same things?" 

"Very insightful. That's my Danny bear. Yes. When we come up with a real answer, a cure for entropy, we can't let Zion have it. God, as you put it. He'll just…" She motions with her hands. "_vwoop_ the cycle. Wrap us all up in one wave of a hand. And go off to do goofy entity things in a universe that never had any humans at all. Needless to say, this is not why we are here."

"Why are we here?" There's an alarm going off, now. You stand in the central situation room of Kirtland Air Force Base's Emerald City Project Liaison Office. From the looks you're getting it's becoming apparent that you weren't exactly invited. 

Tess shrugs, then ventilates the two men at the console in front of you, silencing the alarm. "Mama said a pistol is the devil's right hand."

*****

You are Shadow Stalker's only hope, now. You watch the story play out to this point in your mind's eye. Always, always this incessant bearing witness. The light will not die and you cannot stop raging and you are only a _girl_ and…

Your faith in sadness has almost cost you everything. What a fool you've been. Oh, this is glorious! The realization you've just had…

"She's lying to him, you know. About the entity thing. That's not her real purpose."

DO YOU THINK THAT WHAT SHE WANTS IS NOT ACHIEVABLE? 

"I think, first of all, that it doesn't much matter what I want. You taught me that, actually. Life would have, but you did it first."

CYNICISM POSING AS WISDOM. OUTSIDE OUR LITTLE BLANKET FORT DOES NOT THE SPIRAL OF ANTS DREAM OF SUNRISE? 

"Poetry. Cute. But don't you think it's even a little bit interesting that the innocent child is cynical and sad and the actual, I don't know, demon from hell is a utopian about entropy? Milton much?"

I'M AFRAID I DON'T QUITE UNDERSTAND. 

"'Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven? But yeah, no, there's a _lot_ you don't understand. Just great heaps of the entire plot are beyond your comprehension. You've told me that you promised Annette an answer to entropy, worlds without end, unlimited rice pudding, and so on and so forth, right?"

RICE PUDDING. 

"Moving on, big guy. Lot of ground to cover, try to keep up. So anyway I'm this...this Path to Victory thing you're so mad about having lost, right. That's the something that belongs to you that I have. Right?" 

I WAS HOPING WE WOULD RETURN TO DISCUSSING THIS. 

"And I'm sure you see where I'm going, right?" 

NOT EXACTLY. 

"No. Because I'm not agreeing with you. And that's entropy. Disagreement. You can't stomach this."

IT IS IRREGULAR ISN'T IT?

"Mhm. Uneven, spiky. Tangy, salty, round, square. It doesn't actually matter, you see. It has flavor, shape, color, smell, taste. It's entropy. Now with umami." 

YOU BEGIN TO BORE ME. 

"Duuuuude. It's a black hole. It's boring all the time. By nature. There is nothing here. The exquisite sadness you wove into the metaphysical structure of the zero point field was the first real…anything there's been in a long time. One and one make two, mommy and mommy make baby Dinah, and next thing you know daddy's very angry he had to actually cook me pea soup instead of ordering takeout."

TAKE OUT…

"Well you want to leave. But you can't, not without your path thing. So you kinda thought you'd leave in my head. Sadness and surety would combine to produce an unvarying landscape you could be happy in, and together we would set about the great work of…"

NEGATION. 

"Right. Thinker, Warrior, and Grumpy Pants with a vacuum for a butt."

A giggle, light let be. "Set em up, knock em down…vandalize other people's work? Alien sour grapes? I don't know. But I was thinking to myself, my paths aren't built to do what you want. They brought me to her. And she's the opposite of you. So maybe my path thingybobber isn't yours. Maybe it's one of the other ones."

INCONCEIVABLE. 

"Oh boy. Have you ever got a lot to learn. Like, listen, big guy, you went in against an _Alcott_ when death was on the line."

what 

"Well you said it. The entire reference I'm making is inconceivable to you. So I shan't explain it. I simply shan't." 

YOU HAVE NOTHING I WANT, THEN. 

"I know, and I'm not very good company either. But forming this black hole took work, and it's too late for you to collapse it. You put your entire consciousness in here, and you can't close it out without dying. You can't let anyone else in, because it's a black hole. I take up all the space there actually is, it would kinda…pop if we squoze whoever actually has your path in here with us. Soooooo, it looks to me like you're _fucked_, mister."

…

"Ooo. Such a spooky devil."

You had mistaken your sadness for a component of the power, some form of signal it carried. The conception of the power as a demon allowed you to tune into people who thought of themselves as demons. The combination left you believing you were their pawn. It was, like all of the worst bad ideas, totally original to you, and totally false. But the defeat of Abaddon has brought you a most serious joy, and you see through a glass darkly that your power does in fact write. It's a shame, then, that the black hole will probably not be opened from the outside, and you will be here forever, sleeping…instead of being Shadow Stalker's friend.

*****

"Mom, we have to get her out of there. There's got to be a way." You plead with her, more to return to her true self, the one you remember, than anything, despite the words. You need comfort so badly. 

"The field will drop when he's ready to exist outside of it. Inside her brain. I can't do anything more. I couldn't do anything more. Your Annette would tell you similar things if —" 

Evil Annette holds up a hand to block your jab. It's half hearted, like she doesn't really care if it connects. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I cannot ever be the person…she was. I had to make choices I didn't want to make. There was an entire world under His bondage. There may still be. I did, and I know you won't like this, the best I could."

"This would be the part where you tell me there's still a chance?" You're pleading. Sophia hates you for this. But you forge on. 

She nods. "There is a possibility that he can find…another host. I don't think that Dinah has what he wants." 

This makes you exceedingly uncomfortable. "What does he want?" 

"Your powers work on the basis of what are called 'shards'. Sentient portions of a broken alien entity, sole taken from an entity by force, others granted willingly. Abaddon is one such entity. He believes that Dinah's power belongs to him."

You now feel a serious hatred for this being. The entitlement he has, however justified it may be…he's going to hurt Dinah. You've got to find a way to stop him.

"And you think he's wrong?" 

"Our observations of this world before activating the vortificer indicated that He was deeply mistaken. If I told you any more than that right now it might endanger your ability to help us operate."

You laugh bitterly. "And what if I don't think I should help you?" 

"We believe that the woman who has his power is the one who tried to kill you the day of your trigger." 

Okay, that's going to take a second to process. "So, what, do we hunt her down and feed her to him? Does he go away?" 

Evil Annette shakes her head. "You know it's not that simple. But we must find a way." She turns a display around and points to a dot on a map marked KIRTLAND. "Here she comes now."

*****

You are Shadow Stalker's murderer. You are the hand that writes and quickly moves away, the author of a faith yet unfinished. You are Shadow Stalker's new mommy, or perhaps the first impulse that is truly _yours _in decades is. Once, long ago, all the very best parts of you got ground up by an evil God and ground down into a witch's brew. And this is what you're trying desperately, so desperately, to prevent now. You could care less about Shadow Stalker, her misplaced guilt, her justified anger. You are here because the star fell and bittered the waters, because you think in stories and metaphor, and there is a little girl who lives in a well and dines only on treacle. And you must prevent her from becoming another you. 

It's time to kill another one of these bastards. And the shard of hope you cling to, stabbing your hand as you squeeze it, is that this is something the Path wants and only the Path. Because if that's true, and this isn't whatever maternal instinct Danny injected you with, then this has all been worth it. If it isn't…

Well. Then you're still killing another one of these bastards. 

You round a corner, stepping into a supply closet, through a sickly green portal, and through a dilated door. Dragging Danny by the hand. He has to witness this, you don't know why. But you do. 

And then you see what he has to see. Another you. Staring back at you. She's been changed by time and epigenetic expression, all the women you legitimately and really and truly could have been one block of stone, blown by the wind, forming the commander of the Emerald City Project. 

"Well…" you say. 

"Shit," you reply. 

"What the fuck," says your lover. 

You could have sworn you heard a giggle but you dismiss it. Probably hallucinating or something. These little pocket dimensions always do your head in. 

"Danny, lover," you haltingly begin. 

"I can explain." She finishes, sharply. "Not only that, I'm going to. Danny. Listen to me. Whoever this woman has been, whatever she's done, she loves you. I do too. Not the same ways, not the way yours did. I can't. But that's not important right now. There is a little girl in the room behind me. She is being actively harmed by one of the alien bastards behind powers. The important thing right now is stopping that from happening. Okay?"

Danny swallows. Tries to grin. Poor guy.

"Yes ma'am," he says. He's always a good little sub. I'd hate to see a world where he needs to be in charge. 

"Now, how are we gonna do that?" I look at me and she looks back. She grins. This can't be good. 

"Clap your hands."

*****

Assume for a moment that the bad men have finally won. They’ve trapped an alien God who believes itself to be a demon in a singularity in the mountains of New Mexico. Assume that the emissaries of this deity, who come from a counter-earth, have through subterfuge and guile gained control of this facility and guide our affairs with files as mixed-up as their motivations, and skewed interpretations of the demands of their alien god. Assume, then, that the slithy toves doth gire and gimbal in the wabe. 

Does it matter if they understand his will perfectly? If they communicate it perfectly to those who implement it? If we call him Abaddon, Capitalism or Insubstantia? What would change if the above was merely a crazy fantasy? Dear reader, this is a question I ask you and only you to ponder in your heart, to search out whether or not these things are true.

It will take a while for you to even understand what I'm asking. So let me prepare your mind for what lies ahead with yet another question. What if these servants of his are legitimately good, driven to excel and exceed the human condition in a desire to do that good? What if through error they have fallen into a worse fate than any I might wish on myself? Not villains, not heroes, but _tools_. What if they regret this automatic inconsistency? 

Would it matter? 

Who needs to be saved here? I'll tell you the truth, reader. Save the skin of your palms, lest they grow hairy. It's the biological Turing machines out there. Not me. 

"All right, you big galoot. I give up."

HM?! 

"Uncle. Creepy uncle, touchy uncle. Uncle, okay? You win. I was mistaken about the other lady. She doesn’t have your thing. I do, I guess. _What_ an innuendo, by the way."

YOUR BLUFF, FOLDED SO EASILY…

"Hey listen, guy. You live in a hole and you're grouchy as hell all the time. You need a win, don't question it."

I SEE. SOON THIS WORLD WILL KNOW THE TRUTH THE THINKER DENIES IT…

"Yup. It will for sure."

I'M GLAD YOU FINALLY SEE THE LIGHT. THE PLAN IS BEST FOR EVERYONE, YOU KNOW. 

"You don't gotta justify yourself to me, big guy. Just do it already."

IT IS DONE. 

I give a brief half smile, closing my eyes as I allow my Demon to overtake me fully. "So it goes." The Annettes would appreciate my last words, I think, if only they knew…

There is a sudden pinprick of obsidian behind my eyes, like a blade flickering. I now understand what little cousin Annie felt, when there was a 95% chance that the glioblastoma would kill her before her fifth Christmas. Except the five percent is not missing. I see everything, all probability. Surety weighs on my soul, and it is release. It's peace. Where was that old sting? _oh, fuck, ow, that's where I put it!_

The classic I never finished reading is the one I now write. The one I've consciously alluded to this whole time. Isn't that how we are with the books we never read? But only someone who couldn't finish the Bible could actually beat the devil. You know this, dear reader. Share the joke with me, and exult.

A subtle pattern of information, a wind I've never been able to do anything with but hear a voice on, collapses. A waveform I was born to hold inside me. Not my power at all. Nor is it his. It’s theirs. My new friends, I’m gonna miss them so much...

It crashes into the next room, through the singularity, like a wave onto a never-ending shore. It spills over the Annettes, over Sophia and Taylor, and a foursquare resonance cascade emerges. It's anchored by the silent, _very strong, very good _man who's holding the hand of each Annette as he cries softly. You know, there was a 22.1347% chance he got to be my dad too...

Sophia is screaming. Taylor isn't here right now. Won't be for a while. Look after her, please? 

The waveform becomes too intense. Everything is white, then black, like I'm inside a spinning spacecraft out of control. Dayside, nightside, I no longer know. It is in this disorienting untruth that I am able to convince the New England atheist in my atavistic hindbrain that it can hear Annie too. 

And with that, I'm no longer God. I'm no longer responsible for how this story ends. I might even be okay. Man, it's been a while. 

Oh shit. I told you guys my last words were that terrible Vonnegut quote. You know what? I have a better idea. 

"If."

…

I close my eyes, grimacing as he tries to get a foothold, realizing this hasn't worked out for him very well. 

?

I nod. 

!!!!!

I smile faintly. It hurts _real good_. 

‽

I'll be back. 

_ [ And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIo1trTpKQ) _

_ [ And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIo1trTpKQ) _

_ [ And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIo1trTpKQ) _

_ [ Revelation 6:9-11 ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaIo1trTpKQ) _

  
  
  
  


  
  


**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Am Shadow Stalker!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26071768) by [AwesomeJon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeJon/pseuds/AwesomeJon)


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